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LIBRARY 
IRVINE 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

IRVINE 


GUT  OF 
LEISURE  WORLD  LIBRARY 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

THE   SILENCES   OF   THE    MASTER 

Ifltno.     Net,  95  cents 


The  Confessions  of 
A  Browning  Lover 


BY 

JOHN  WALKER  POWELL 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 

NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


It- 


Copyright.  1918,  by 
JOHN    ^^ALKER   POWELL 


TO  "H.  G.' 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTKR  PAOB 

Preface 9 

I.    Of  the  Poet  as  Artist 15 

II.    Of  Artists  and  Philosophers 49 

III.  Of  Ideas  and  Forms 76 

IV.  Of   Orthodoxy  and   the   Theory  of 

Knowledge 100 

V.    Of  Structural  vs.  Ornamental  Truth  .  132 

VI.    Of  Life  and  Love 157 

VII.    Of  the  Problem  of  Evil 185 

VIII.    Prospice 213 


PREFACE 

As  I  look  over  these  pages,  now  that  they  are 
finished,  I  wonder  if  I  have  accomplished  the  pur- 
pose with  which  I  began.  I  seem  to  have  been 
"ever  a  fighter."  The  controversial  note  runs 
through  much  of  what  I  have  written.  Well, 
there  seem  to  be  plenty  of  windmills  in  our  modern 
life  at  which  to  tilt,  and  a  Browning  lover  ought 
not  to  be  averse  to  breaking  a  lance  now  and  then. 
If  sometimes  I  have  fought  with  shadows,  or 
doughtily  overthrown  a  man  of  straw,  it  may  be  I 
have  discovered  to  the  world  some  lurking  enemy 
whose  presence  was  unsuspected,  or  that  I  have 
shown  the  unknowing  where  they  may  arm  them- 
selves when  the  hour  comes  to  fight. 

I  have  not  much  concerned  me  with  many 
matters  of  usual  interest  to  commentators.  I  have 
not  attempted  to  discover  the  meaning  of  puzzhng 
passages,  nor  to  elucidate  obscure  references, 
preferring  to  leave  these  things  to  the  learned 
librarian's  assistants  who  dehght  in  them.  I  have 
come  upon  many  amusing  discoveries  in  my 
reading.  Solemn  notes  in  the  appendix  of  well- 
known  editions  attribute  the  most  impossible 
meanings  to  the  poet,  or  mistake  the  most  obvious 
references.  Misquotations  abound  in  the  writings 
of  those  who  are  esteemed  authorities.  Some- 
times the  slightest  tincture  of  Browning  seems  to 

9 


PREFACE 

liavr  j)o\vor  to  color  whole  seas  of  sentimental 
vai>()rini,'s  on  tlio  part  of  popular  lecturers.  None 
of  those  tilings  move  me.  I  may  have  sinned  in 
my  own  way,  but  neither  an  annotator  nor  a  com- 
mentator will  I  be. 

It  may  be  that  I  have  laid  myself  open  to  the 
charge  of  rambling  into  fields  remote  from  the 
path  I  set  out  to  follow;  of  venturing  to  express 
opinions  on  matters  of  literary  or  artistic  criticism 
too  high  for  me.  But  I  have  ranged  no  more 
widely  than  Browning  himself,  whose  interests 
veered  from  art  and  music  to  metaphysics,  Greek 
tragedies,  and  mediaeval  history.  If  I  have 
spoken  as  an  amateur  and  not  as  the  scribes, 
allowance  may  be  made  for  the  liberty  of  the  con- 
fessional. I  shall  be  content,  not  if  the  reader 
agrees  with  what  I  may  have  said  of  art  or  phi- 
losophy, but  if  I  have  roused  him  to  thought. 

Another  point  at  which  I  venture  to  anticipate 
the  critics  is  in  the  matter  of  my  attitude  toward 
modernism,  both  in  literature  and  in  science.  As 
to  what  I  have  said  of  the  chief  writers  of  our  day 
I  have  no  apology  to  make.  That  they  are  great 
artists  I  have  cheerfully  admitted.  That  they 
have  no  comprehensive  philosophy  of  life,  no 
sufficient  answer  to  its  deepest  questions,  it  seems 
to  me  they  would  themselves  as  freely  grant. 
The  interpretation  of  Christianity  embodied  in  the 
traditions  of  the  church  has  been  definitely  set 
aside  by  all  the  principal  votaries  of  literature, 
who  base  their  thinking  on  the  science  of  the 

10 


PREFACE 

latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century.  They  offer 
nothing  whatever  to  take  its  place. 

That  this  is  a  weakness  in  their  art,  and  that 
the  world  must  in  the  end  come  back  to  the  essen- 
tial truths  which  the  church  has  been  trying  to 
teach,  however  profoundly  our  interpretation  of 
these  truths  may  be  modified  by  the  enlargement 
of  thought  which  the  new  science  has  afforded,  is 
the  fundamental  thesis  of  this  book.  I  am  a 
Browning  lover  because  Browning  did  teach  these 
essential  truths,  and  taught  them  in  a  form  which 
divorced  them  from  the  specific  dogmas  of  the 
schools  and  made  them  acceptable  to  one  who 
has  sat  at  the  feet  of  present-day  science  and 
philosophy. 

I  would  be  the  last  to  belittle  the  contribution 
of  science  to  modern  life.  What  I  have  to  say  re- 
garding the  shallowness  of  much  scientific  teach- 
ing, and  its  tendency  to  deny  the  ideal  ends  of  the 
spiritual  life,  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 
rights  of  science  in  its  own  field  of  empirical  re- 
search, nor  with  the  value  of  its  results  as  material 
for  further  interpretation.  Nor  would  I  deny 
that  there  are  many  great  scientists  whose  spirit- 
ual vision  has  been  sound,  and  who  have  made  im- 
portant contributions  to  our  knowledge  of  life 
and  its  meaning. 

But  it  cannot  be  denied,  first,  that  the  scien- 
tific method  tends  to  discount  the  ideal  significance 
of  the  facts  with  which  it  deals,  and  to  fasten 
attention  upon  the  material  universe  to  the  exclu- 

11 


PREFACE 

sion  of  the  world  of  spiritual  values;  and,  second, 
that  tlurc  is  a  niarkcd  tendency  on  the  part  of 
many  wlio  arc  without  a  peer  in  their  own  particu- 
lar depart  men  I  of  scientific  knowledge  to  speak  as 
those  having  authority  upon  matters  of  philosophy 
and  roli^Mon  in  which  they  are  veriest  tyros. 

^Yhen  the  empirical  scientist  whose  devotion  to 
his  own  special  field  has  absorbed  his  thought  for 
a  lifetime,  and  the  character  of  whose  work  has  in 
itself  unfitted  him  for  abstract  thinking,  and  who, 
moreover,  knows  nothing  whatever  of  the  history 
of  the  ideas  with  which  he  deals  or  the  unnum- 
bered times  his  pet  fallacies  have  been  exploded, 
ventures  into  the  field  of  metaphysics  or  theology, 
the  result  does  not  always  tend  to  edification. 

Still  less  is  such  a  man  capable  of  expressing  an 
opinion  on  matters  of  religious  feeling  and  senti- 
ment, wherein  his  experience  has  tended  to  dwarf 
his  imagination  and  warp  his  judgment.  Darwin, 
as  is  well  known,  confessed  that  his  devotion  to 
scientific  study  had  destroyed  his  capacity  for  the 
enjoyment  of  poetry  and  music.  He  had  the  good 
sense,  however,  not  to  venture  an  opinion  in  these 
departments  wherein  by  his  own  confession  it  had 
been  worthless.  Not  all  scientists  have  exhibited 
that  great  man's  modesty  and  good  judgment. 
Yet  the  world  listens  eagerly  for  the  theological 
opinions  of  great  inventors  or  successful  captains 
of  industry — on  whose  religious  capacity  I  would 
not  be  understood  to  stand  in  judgment,  but 
whose  notions  regarding  spiritual  truth  are  not  to 

12 


PREFACE 

be  compared  in  significance  with  those  of  some 
humble  saint  who  knows  nothing  but  the  Bible 
and  the  Catechism, 

As  I  have  said  in  discussing  this  matter,  the 
scientific  world  itself  has  in  the  main  moved  a 
good  way  beyond  the  skeptical  attitude  of  Tyn- 
dall  and  Huxley  and  their  contemporaries.  But 
the  world  of  magazine  science,  as  well  as  the  world 
of  polite  literature,  has  not  yet  found  it  out,  and 
it  will  doubtless  take  another  generation  before 
our  novelists  and  reviewers  can  be  expected  to 
display  an  open  mind  toward  the  spiritual  prob- 
lems which  the  common  man  finds  paramount  in 
his  experience.  The  younger  generation  of  poets, 
of  whom  Alfred  Noyes  and  John  Masefield  are 
representatives,  display  a  much  simpler  and 
franker  acceptance  of  spiritual  truth, sand  the  sky 
seems  to  be  reddening  to  the  dawn  of  a  new  and 
brighter  day. ' 

That  a  world  in  which  the  vast  accumulations  of 
scientific  knowledge  shall  become  the  foundation 
for  a  thoroughgoing  spiritual  interpretation  of 
human  experience  w  ill  be  a  much  bigger  and  richer 
world  than  that  in  which  Browning  moved,  I 
steadfastly  believe  and  joyfully  profess.  But  to 
me,  at  least,  the  poet  himself  has  been  the  prophet 
of  that  new  day. 

When  this  book  was  begun  the  war  in  Europe 
was  still  in  its  early  stages.  Now  in  its  third 
year  it  is  still  too  early  even  to  guess  what  its 
ultimate  effect  on  the  spiritual  life  of  the  world 

13 


PREFACE 

mav   1)0.     Assuredly,    liowevor,    the   unmeasured 


sutfcriug  of  the  flesh  mikI  ;m<,Mii.sli  of  spirit  through 
whit'li   humanity    has  passed   during  these  thirty  / 
months  nmst  issue  in  a  deepened  sense  of  spirit-  ( 
ual  need  and  a  new  reliance  upon  the  profoundly    ] 
simple  truths  of  a  spiritual  faith. 

The  age  in  which  we  live  seems  typified  in  Par- 
acelsus— headstrong  in  its  eagerness  for  knowledge, 
yet  blind  to  the  supreme  significance  of  love  as  the 
power  which  alone  can  take  up  that  knowledge 
and  cause  it  to  minister  to  the  well-being  of  the 
poor,  foolish,  broken  human  life  of  the  world. 
But  Browning  it  was  who  taught  the  present  world 
to  sing  with  Paracelsus, 

"I  go  to  prove  my  soul! 
I  see  my  way  as  birds  their  trackless  way. 
I  shall  arrive!  what  time,  what  circuit  first, 
I  ask  not:  but  unless  God  send  his  hail 
Or  blinding  fireballs,  sleet,  or  stifling  snow, 
In  some  time,  his  good  time,  I  shall  arrive: 
He  guides  me  and  the  bird.     In  his  good  time!" 

Like  Paracelsus,  I  too  commit  myself  to  the  sea 
of  circumstance  for  better  or  worse: 

"Are  there  not,  Festus,  are  there  not,  dear  Michal, 
Two   points  in  the  adventure  of  the  diver. 
One — when,  a  beggar,  he  prepares  to  plunge, 
One — when,  a  prince,  he  rises  with  his  pearl? 
Festus,  I  plunge!" 

March  15,  1917. 


14 


CHAPTER  I 
OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

When  Saint  Luke  wrote  the  Gospel  which  bears 
his  name,  he  made  the  number  of  similar  writings 
already  in  existence  a  reason  for  writing  another. 
A  like  apology  may  be  desirable  for  adding  to  the 
already  interminable  literature  on  Browning.  The 
Browning  Centennial  has  come  and  gone,  bringing 
in  its  train  the  inevitable  quota  of  essays  and  re- 
views. The  Papers  of  the  Browning  Society  have 
been  before  the  world  for  many  years.  Women's 
Clubs  have  discussed  the  deep  and  hidden  mean- 
ings of  the  poet's  most  obvious  commonplaces,  and 
essayists  and  lecturers  without  number  have 
added  their  critical  judgment  to  the  mass  of  com- 
ment upon  his  work.  Can  it  be  possible  that 
anything  has  been  left  unsaid,  that  any  new  light 
can  be  thrown  on  the  poet's  message  or  his  place 
in  the  pantheon  of  English  bards  .'^ 

At  the  same  time  the  very  number  of  existing 
books  and  essays  upon  Browning  is  so  confusing, 
so  discouraging  to  the  most  excellent  but  bewil- 
dered Theophilus,  that  if  one'new  attempt  might 
be  made,  like  the  poet's  own  Cleon,  to  "prove 
absurd  all  written  hitherto.  .  .  ."  Or  if  a  new 
voice  might  attract  the  attention  of  some  one 
halting  perplexed  which  treatise  to  select,  which 

15 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

essay  to  endue;  a  voi('t>  ulterin^'  ixMliajj-s  nothing 
j)arti('iilarly  now,  hnt  at  Irasl  l(M\iiif;"  out  niiieh  of 
tlio  old  that  darkened  eounsel;  if  one  wlio  is  neither 
by  training  nor  temper  a  literary  eritie;  a  mere 
representative  of  that  ultimate  public  to  which 
the  artist  appeals;  a  seeker  after  truth,  an  earnest 
believer  in  the  Kingdom  of  the  Spirit,  holding 
everything  grist  that  comes  to  his  mill,  and  claim- 
ing the  right  to  find  instruction  and  inspiration 
wherever  he  may — if  such  an  one  should  reveal 
the  processes  whereby  he  has  attained  to  some 
measure  of  insight,  his  experience  may  doubtless 
afford  little  new  light  for  the  initiated,  but  it  may 
prove  of  value  for  some  wayfaring  man  like  him- 
self. It  may  be  worth  while  for  one  more  witness 
to  attest  the  unfailing  stimulus,  the  deep  spiritual 
satisfaction  which  he  finds  in  Browning  above  all 
other  English  poets. 

This  essay  does  not  attempt  anything  so  am- 
bitious as  a  discussion  of  Browning's  "philosophy." 
It  is  only  what  its  title  imports:  the  confessions  of 
a  Browning  lover.  It  is  inevitable,  however,  that 
some  comparisons  and  contrasts  should  be  in- 
volved with  the  main  currents  of  present-day 
thought. 

Tennyson  declared  that  poetry  means,  not  what 
the  author  may  have  had  in  mind,  but  what  it 
suggests  to  the  reader.  If  I  can  make  clear, 
therefore,  what  Browning's  poetry  means  to  me, 
I  claim  the  right  to  find  such  inspiration  therein, 
without  any  desire  to  impose  my  feeling  on  anyone 

16 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

else.  I  simply  would  fain  share  my  discoveries 
with  my  neighbors.  The  personal  character  of 
this  paper  may  perhaps  also  justify  a  somewhat 
freer  use  of  the  personal  pronoun  than  would  be 
allowable  in  a  critical  essay. 


Like  most  citizens,  I  listened  to  a  good  many 
lectures  on  Browning,  and  read  with  more  or  less 
interest  various  interpretations  of  his  teaching, 
before  I  mustered  courage  to  tackle  the  poet 
himself.  I  knew  all  the  stock  comments  on  his 
"obscurity."  I  was  familiar  with  the  witty  jests 
upon  "Sordello."  I  felt,  as  have  doubtless  many 
others,  that  there  is  enough  intelligible  poetry  in 
the  world  to  justify  one  in  refusing  to  be  bothered 
with  the  work  of  a  man  who  did  not  think  it  worth 
while  to  express  himself  clearly.  As  the  range  of 
my  reading  increased,  however,  I  kept  coming 
upon  traces  of  Browning's  influence.  This  theo- 
logian, that  teacher  of  philosophy,  this  preacher, 
and  that  essayist  would  hint  at  the  spiritual 
riches  which  reward  the  patient  explorer.  Sug- 
gestive allusions,  tantalizing  quotations  stimu- 
lated my  curiosity.  I  discovered  that  many  men 
whose  intellectual  and  spiritual  power  I  had  come 
to  respect  held  Browning  in  reverence.  So  I  took 
my  courage  in  both  hands  and  ordered  from  my 
bookseller  the  fat  and  forbidding  volume  of  the 
Cambridge  Edition. 

17 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

I  suppose  up  to  that  tinu'  I  luid  read  "How 
TIu'v  Broiighl  llu-  (kkmI  News  from  Glient  to  Aix," 
and  '"riic  Tied  l*i[)cr,"  and  "You  Know  We 
French  Stormed  Ralisbon,"  but  that  was  about 
the  extent  of  my  acquaintance  with  the  poet.  By 
some  cliance  ahnost  the  first  poem  I  attempted  to 
read  was  "Saul." 

Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 
When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken. 

The  vigor  and  freshness  of  the  verse,  the  wealth 
of  imagery,  the  glowing  enthusiasm,  rising  at 
times  to  rapture,  swept  me  off  my  feet.  The 
spiritual  insight  and  fervor  which  mark  the  climax 
of  the  poem,  the  unanswerable  appeal  of  the  argu- 
ment, the  thrilling  power  of  its  statement  of  the 
central  spiritual  teaching  of  Christianity,  affected 
me  like  nothing  else  I  had  ever  read.  I  was  filledV 
with  enthusiasm  for  the  j)oet  as  a  teacher  of  re-l 
ligion.  I  myself  was  trying  to  make  spiritual 
truth  intelligible  to  my  generation,  to  enforce  it 
on  the  hearts  and  consciences  of  the  world  about 
me.  Every  incident,  every  illustration,  every 
line  which  opened  new  depths  to  my  own  under- 
standing, or  which  stated  the  principles  of  the 
spiritua'l  life  in  a  fresh  and  vigorous  way  which  I 
might  employ  to  enforce  my  own  teaching,  was 
so  much  pure  gold,  and  I  had  found  an  inex- 
haustible mine.  It  was  not  long  before  smiles 
would  pass  over  my  congregation  when  I  men- 
tioned the  poet's  name.     Enthusiastic  members 

18 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

of  women's  clubs  would  absent-mindedly  address 
me  as  Mr.  Browning.  I  found  myself  invited  to 
give  talks  at  afternoon  teas,  to  read  papers  at 
ministerial  meetings,  until  at  length  I  blossomed 
into  a  full-fledged  club  lecturer  upon  Browning. 

In  all  this,  like  the  poet  himself,  I  was  no 
Browningite.  I  found  incredibly  weary,  arid 
stretches.  My  somewhat  narrow  religious  preju- 
dices were  often  shocked.  I  could  not  under- 
stand why  a  serious-minded  religious  philosopher 
should  treat  many  of  the  subjects  which  were  to 
be  found  in  his  poems,  or  look  with  so  large  a 
tolerance  upon  the  frailties  and  sins  of  mankind. 
But  these  were  only  the  spots  on  the  sun;  warmth 
and  light  unfailing  were  there,  and  my  heart 
expanded  under  the  beneficent  rays. 

For  a  number  of  years  I  had  given  courses  of 
lectures  before  a  certain  woman's  club,  and  it 
seemed  desirable  to  announce  a  final  brief  series 
which  should  sum  up  in  a  completer  and  more 
systematic  way  the  net  results  of  my  study  of  the 
poet.  To  add  a  measure  of  popular  interest — and 
widen  the  sale  of  tickets — the  services  of  a  well- 
known  reader  were  secured,  who  should  lighten 
the  course  by  dn  evening  of  interpretive  readings. 
I  came  to  listen  on  the  appointed  evening,  secure 
in  the  smug  assurance  of  my  special  knowledge  of 
Browning,  and  quite  convinced  that  the  reader 
would  do  well  to  confer  with  me  before  she  began. 
This  being  naturally  out  of  the  question,  I  sat  in 
the  audience  and  listened  to  an  artist  interpreting 

19 


CON  FESSIOXS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

the  work  of  anolhor  artist — and  all  at  once  I  had  a 
new  Browning!  Lines  I  had  passed  over  a 
thousand  limes  heeaiise  they  could  not  be  made 
to  bear  any  theological  significance  began  to  live 
and  glow  in  my  feeling.  Poems  that  had  seemed 
mere  Jcux  d' esprit,  thrown  off  by  the  poet  in  a 
moment  of  fine  carelessness,  were  suddenly  made 
to  a])pear  vital  parts  of  his  outlook  on  life. 

I  began  the  next  morning  to  read  the  poems  on 
wliieh  for  years  I  had  so  solemnly  lectured.  I 
was  amazed  to  find  what  a  change  mj'  new  per- 
sj)ectivc  had  wrought.  The  old  truths  which  had 
thrilled  me  so  many  times  were  there,  but,  like  a 
well-mounted  jewel,  they  gained  new  beauty  and 
significance  from  their  setting.  The  religious 
teachings  wdiich  I  had  found  so  helpful  gained 
rather  than  lost  by  the  broader  human  values  out 
of  which  they  arose.  I  began  to  wonder  if,  after 
all,  the  Browningites  and  their  successors  had  not 
been  on  the  wrong  track.  So  much  has  been 
said  of  Browning  as  a  philosopher,  so  much  of 
his  obscurity  has  been  laid  to  the  profundity  of 
his  thought:  I  began  to  see  that  perhaps,  after 
all,  he  was  an  artist  rather  than  a  philosopher,  a 
seer  rather  than  a  thinker,  and  tllat  much  of  his 
obscurity  was  due  to  the  fact  that  he  flew  like  a 
monoplane  from  peak  to  peak,  leaving  us  mere 
thinkers  toiling  endlessly  along  the  precipices, 
amid  the  fogs  and  through  the  tortuous  trails  of 
the  valleys  between. 

Several  years  have  passed  since  the  experience 
20 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

I  have  described,  years  wherein  my  acquaintance 
with  the  work  of  the  poet  has  broadened  and 
deepened  and  my  enjoyment  in  his  poetry  grown 
ever  more  vivid.  I  am  less  of  a  Browningite  than 
ever.  I  no  longer  sit  awe-struck  at  his  profound 
commonplaces.  I  am  not  always  certain  of  the 
value  of  his  theological  doctrines.  I  am  quite 
convinced  that,  after  being  told  by  a  generation 
of  profound  and  learned  critics  that  he  was  a 
philosopher,  Mr.  Browning  came  in  his  old  age 
to  take  himself  at  their  valuation,  and  that  he 
tried  with  only  a  measure  of  success  after  "The 
Ring  and  The  Book"  to  be  sl  philosopher.  At 
any  rate,  for  my  own  part  I  could  cheerfully  lose 
almost  everything  he  wrote  after  that  date  (unlike 
Professor  Saintsbury,  I  would  except  "Balaus- 
tion")  and  not  feel  impoverished.  Flashes  there 
are  of  the  old  fire,  moments  of  vision,  of  the  old 
joy  in  life  for  its  own  sake, 

The  beauty  and  the  wonder  and  the  power, 

The  shapes  of  things,  their  colors,  lights,  and  shades, 

Changes,  surprises. 

But  too  often  "there  has  passed  away  a  glory  from 
the  earth,"  and  one  is  conscious  only  of  the  poet's 
effort  to  recreate  by  main  strength  the  old  feeling. 
Argument  takes  the  place  of  vision,  and  one  can 
only  regretfully  acknowledge  that  the  inspiration 
of  the  prophet  is  like  the  wind  that  bloweth  where 
it  listeth  and  is  the  free  gift  of  God.  In  this  we  have 
only  one  more  instance  of  an  old  phenomenon. 

21 


rONFKSSTOXS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Sluikosponre  Jilone  of  bards — has  not  someone 
said?— knew  when  to  retire  to  wool-growing  and 
miss  tlie  age  of  wool-gat liering. 

Perliaps  a  single  illustration  will  make  clear  the 
change  which  I  have  described  in  my  attitude 
toward  the  poet.  At  the  height  of  my  early  en- 
thusiasm, when  I  was  lecturing  before  the  women's 
clubs,  a  lady  came  to  me  and  with  pathetic  ear- 
nestness asked  me  what  was  the  meaning  of  the 
poem  entitled  "Sibrandus  Schafnaburgensis."  She 
had  been  told  by  some  one  that  it  was  a  remarkable 
poem  with  a  very  important  lesson — which  she 
had  been  unable  to  discover — and  she  sought  my 
help.  I  read  the  poem  with  great  though tfulness, 
with  intense  concentration  of  spirit,  desiring 
earnestly  to  know  what  profound  spiritual  lesson 
could  be  conveyed  by  this  incident  of  the  burial 
and  resurrection  of  the  pedantic  old  book.  It  was 
in  vain.  I  had  to  confess  to  my  friend  that  I 
gave  it  up.  I  could  see  neither  rhyme  nor  reason 
in  the  incident  or  the  telling  of  it.  There  was  no 
theological  doctrine  so  far  as  I  could  understand, 
no  significant  spiritual  crisis.  The  whole  thing 
was  apparently  one  of  those  aberrations  of  an 
earnest  soul  when  under  the  influence  of  some 
demonic  power  he  failed  to  take  himself  seriously, 
and  so  wasted  "a  fire  God  gave  for  other  ends." 

Chesterton  should  have  supplied  the  clue  when 
he  wrote  that  the  two  poems  entitled  "Garden 
Fancies"  were  intended  to  teach  the  abstruse 
philosophical  doctrine:  the  first  that  a  woman  may 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

be  charming,  the  second,  that  a  book  may  be  a 
bore;  but  the  witty  comment  failed  to  pierce  the 
dense  armor  of  my  PhiHstinism,  and  the  poem 
remained  a  blank  until  that  evening  when  my 
eyes  were  opened.  How  vividly  I  saw  it! — the 
glorious  summer  morning,  full  of  the  sweetness  of 
June  sunshine,  of  birds  and  flowers — wasted  in  the 
soul-weariness  of  wading  through  a  book  in  which 
there  was  none  of  the  milk  of  human-kindness, 
none  of  the  wine  of  life,  nothing  of  the  freshness 
and  interest  of  a  vivid  human  sympathy,  but  only 
barren  learning  thrice-removed  from  all  contact 
with  the  living  world  which  God  made.  How 
eagerly  and  sympathetically  I  followed  the  poet  as, 
the  book  disposed  of  in  the  plum-tree  crevice,  he 

Went  indoors,  brought  out  a  loaf, 
Half  a  cheese  and  a  bottle  of  Chablis, 

Lay  on  the  grass  and  forgot  the  oaf 
Over  a  jolly  chapter  of  Rabelais! 

And  his  glee  over  the  state  of  the  book  when  a 
month  later  he  fished  it  solemnly  up,  and  burying 
it  on  his  shelves  amid  seven  other  books  more 
useless  than  the  first,  whole-heartedly  bade  it 
"Dry-rot  at  ease  till  the  judgment  day!" 

I  enjoyed  the  incident  solely  for  its  own  sake, 
without  looking  for  any  spiritual  interpretation 
or  philosophical  doctrine.  It  was  a  jolly  little 
glimpse  of  real  life  with  which  I  entirely  sym- 
pathized. I  too  have  been  bored  by  books,  but 
have  been  debarred  my  revenge.  The  trick  he 
played   on   the   pedantic  old   scholar  was  worth 

23 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  HKOVVNING  LOVER 

doiiiir,  in  the  first  phicr,  mid  worth  telling,  in  the 
second,  for  I  lie  siieer  fun  of  it,  and  because  life  is 
too  good  und  sweel  a  thing  lo  be  wasted  on  such 
vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit. 

Then  I  reflected,  to  my  own  amazement,  this  is 
a  spiritual  lesson!  This  is  a  philosophical  teach- 
ing; and  it  is  hinted  at  in  the  poem  itself  by  all 
that  wild  riot  of  the  joy  of  living  that  goes  on  in 
the  hollow  of  the  plum-tree  while  the  dry-as-dust 
old  scholar  merely  shivers  and  shrivels  up  in  entire 
failure  to  understand: 

All  that  life  and  fun  and  rominng. 

All  that  frisking  and  twisting  and  coupling, 
While  slowly  our  poor  friend's  leaves  were  swamping, 

And  clasps  were  cracking  and  covers  suppling, 
As  if  you  had  carried  sour  John  Knox 

To  the  ])layhouse  at  Paris,  Vienna  or  Munich, 
Fastened  him  into  a  front-row  box 

And  danced  oflf  the  ballet  with  trousers  and  tunic. 

^  11 

I  began  to  apply  my  new-found  method  else- 
where, and  I  found  that  everywhere  the  poet 
looked  upon  life  with  the  artist's  frank  pleasure  in 
its  manifold  beauty  and  interest;  that  any  char- 
acter which  piqued  his  curiosity,  any  incident 
which  caught  his  attention,  was  worth  transcribing 
for  its  own  sake,  as  a  painter  fills  his  sketchbook 
with  this  flower  and  that  clump  of  trees,  this  bank 
of  clouds  and  that  sunset: 

God's  works — paint  anyone,  and  count  it  crime 
To  let  a  truth  slip. 

24 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

To  be  sure,  this  in  itself  constitutes  a  philosophy 
of  life  and  is  the  key  to  much  else  in  the  poet's 
teaching.  Also,  no  doubt,  every  artist  has  a 
philosophy,  and  consciously  or  unconsciously 
employs  his  art  in  the  interest  of  his  creed.  But 
"I  think  this  is  the  authentic  sign  and  seal"  of 
artisthood  that  it  "holds  the  mirror  up  to  nature"; 
in  other  words,  that  it  enters  sympathetically  into 
all  the  moods  of  the  world  about  us  and  endeavors 
to  interpret  them  to  us,  so  that  we  too  may  be  made 
to  feel  their  beauty  and  significance  and  be 
brought  into  harmony  with  them.  The  art  of 
poetry,  of  course,  differs  from  music  or  the  plastic 
arts  in  that  its  effects  are  wrought  through  ideas, 
and  not  through  harmony  of  sound  or  visible  forms, 
and  hence  the  intellectual  content  is  greater.  We 
demand  and  expect  a  larger  measure  of  intellectual 
truth.  But  rhymed  and  rhythmic  philosophy  is 
not  poetry.  We  look  first  for  vision,  for  intuitive, 
emotional  understanding  of  nature  and  life. 
There  doubtless  is  such  a  thing  as  didactic  poetry, 
but  in  the  main  the  adjective  and  the  noun  destroy 
each  other.  Even  hymnology  reveals  the  com- 
mon emotional  and  idealistic  element  which  under- 
lies theological  differences.  The  hymns  which 
live,  which  move  the  heart  and  inspire  the  spirit, 
are  neither  Catholic  nor  Protestant,  Liberal  nor 
Orthodox,  Calvinist  nor  Arminian.  They  are  the 
expression  of  the  emo  Lions  engendered  by  the  con- 
templation of  truth  rather  than  that  of  truth  itself. 

The  "teaching"  of  true  poetry,  if  this  view  be 
25 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNINCi  LOVER 

correct,  is,  accordingly,  sccoiuhiry  and  incidental. 
It  is  im  effect  wrought  by  the  poetic  vision,  first 
in  the  mind  of  the  poet  himself  and  next  in  that 
of  the  reader.  We  read  Shakespeare  and  Goethe 
antl  Dante  primarily  for  the  sake  of  the  variety 
and  richness  of  life  as  it  appears  in  their  pages; 
that  is  to  say,  for  the  understanding  and  sympathy 
and  power  with  which  they  have  portrayed  it.  It 
is  only  after  we  have  felt  and  appreciated  that 
power  that  we  go  on  to  ask  what  lessons  the  poet 
himself  drew  from  the  things  he  described  or  what 
he  desired  to  teach  us.  Sometimes,  to  be  sure, 
the  subject  of  the  poem  may  be  a  mood,  or  an  idea, 
or  the  operation  of  an  idea  upon  a  man's  feeling  and 
action.  In  such  a  case  we  seem  to  have  come 
directly  upon  the  workings  of  the  poet's  mind 
and  to  be  put  in  possession  of  his  thought  about 
life.  But  even  here  the  truth  in  the  poet's  soul 
must  be  truthfully  embodied  in  the  life  he  depicts, 
and  suggested  by  it.  We  are  dealing  with  prose 
rather  than  poetry  if  the  idea  which  forms  the 
groundwork  of  the  poem  is  not  somehow  univer- 
salized through  the  poet's  emotions  rather  than 
his  understanding,  so  that  it  is  our  own  emotions 
and  intuitions  that  are  appealed  to  first  of  all,  and 
the  reason  waits  as  handmaid  upon  the  imagina- 
tion. 

That  Browning  sometimes  philosophizes  when 
we  want  him  to  poetize,  and  that  the  tendency 
grew  upon  him  with  age,  I  have  already  admitted. 
The  same  thing  was  true  of  Wordsworth.     Mat- 
fee 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

thew  Arnold  declared  that  all  of  Wordsworth  that 
is  worth  reading  was  written  during  a  brief  period 
of  ten  years  in  the  middle  of  a  long  life.  Only  the 
most  abandoned  Wordsworthian  can  find  any 
poetry  in  the  wearisome  prosing  of  the  "Excur- 
sion." It  is  not  this  that  gives  the  poet  of  Rydal 
Mount  his  place  in  our  hearts;  but  his  simple  and 
beautiful  descriptions  of  nature  and  humble  life, 
his  exquisite  sensitiveness  to  beauty,  his  power  to 
discover  "Joy  in  widest  commonalty  spread." 
When  he  aspires  to  be  a  philosopher  we  part 
company.  If  Browning  is  primarily  a  philosopher 
rather  than  a  poet,  as  so  many  of  his  critics  and 
admirers  seek  to  prove,  then  his  place  in  the  lit- 
erary history  of  the  nineteenth  century  will  be 
determined  by  the  soundness  of  his  reasoning,  the 
value  of  his  contribution  to  our  interpretation  of 
life.  But  if,  as  I  believe,  he  is  primarily  an 
artist,  then  his  place  is  to  be  fixed  by  the  skill  and 
power  with  which  he  has  made  his  appeal  to  our 
heart  and  our  imagination.  His  philosophical 
teaching  may  be  sound,  or  it  may  be  subject  to  the 
common  aberrations  which  beset  the  abstract 
thinker.  But  if  his  artistic  intuitions  are  sure,  we 
may  draw  our  own  philosophical  conclusions  quite 
undisturbed  by  any  question  regarding  his.  The 
lasting  beauty  and  significance  of  the  "Ode  on  the 
Intimations  of  Immortality"  do  not  depend  on 
our  acceptance  of  the  doctrine  of  the  preexistence 
of  the  soul,  but  on  the  appeal  which  the  poem 
makes  to  our  sense  of  beauty  and  the  power  with 

n 


CONFESSIONS  ()!•    A  BROWNING  LOVER 

which  the  i)oet  has  doi)ictc(l  some  of  the  phases  of 
our  coninion  huniaii  experience.  So  the  worth 
and  beauty  of  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra"  do  not  depend 
on  our  behef  in  ininiorlality.  but,  rather,  on  the 
power  of  the  poem  to  challenge  the  will  and  in- 
spire us  to  live  greatly. 

There  seems  to  be  a  very  conspiracy  to  refuse 
Browning  a  place  in  the  category  of  artists  of  this 
sort  and  to  force  him  into  the  ranks  of  the  philoso- 
phers and  theologians.  His  admirers  have  of- 
fended no  less  than  his  critics.  On  the  one  hand, 
we  have  the  never-ending  procession  of  volumes, 
large  and  small,  upon  his  teachings.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  have  the  various  pronouncements  of  the 
critics,  from  the  Edinburgh  Review  to  Paul  Elmer 
More,  regarding  his  limitations  as  a  poet.  Of  his 
teaching  I  shall  have  somewhat  to  say  in  another 
place,  but  I  have  a  few  more  pearls  to  cast  to  the 
critics. 

That  there  are  in  Browning's  poetry  occasional 
passages  of  limpid  clearness  and  great  poetic 
beauty  is  everywhere  admitted.  The  dedication 
of  "The  Ring  and  The  Book,"  beginning, 

O  Lyric  Love,  half-angel  and  half-bird, 
And  all  a  wonder  and  a  wild  desire, 

is  pure  vision.  The  love  song  in  the  first  act  of 
"The  Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon,"  the  prologue  to 
"Two  Poets  of  Croisic,"  the  lines  in  "Paracelsus'* 
beginning,  "Spring  wind,  like  a  dancing  psaltress," 
and  hundreds  of  other  passages  bear  witness  to  the 

«8 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

poet's  power  to  sing  directly  to  the  heart.  But 
are  these  passages  of  sufficient  number  and  extent, 
amid  the  vast  expanse  of  Browning's  work,  to 
justify  his  hold  on  the  world?  Is  not  the  real 
interest  in  his  writings  rather  to  be  found  partly 
in  the  pleasure  of  working  out  an  intellectual 
puzzle;  partly  in  the  psychological  interest — his 
marvelous  skill  in  depicting  what  Mr.  More  has 
called  "suspended  psychology,"  that  peculiar 
mental  state  in  which  a  man  at  once  acts  and 
stands  apart  from  himself  and  judges  his  action; 
but  chiefly  in  the  direct  appeal  of  his  philosophy 
of  life? 

That  there  is  an  element  of  truth  here  must  be 
admitted.  Browning's  philosophy  of  hfe  is  a  very 
vigorous  one  and  does  appeal  to  very  many  earnest 
and  eager-hearted  men  and  women.  His  skill  in 
portraying  a  complex  state  of  mind  and  emotion 
is  unrivaled.  That  way  of  getting  at  things,  of 
telling  a  story  almost  by  indirection  as  it  were, 
which  is  peculiarly  Browningesque,  has  a  fascina- 
tion all  its  own.  But  is  this  all?  And  if  it  were 
all,  would  it  have  no  place  in  true  art?  Must  we 
reject  the  Flemish  painters  because  they  learned 
art  from  the  goldsmiths,  and  wrought  their 
backgrounds  with  loving  care  instead  of  cultivating 
the  delicate  spiritual  mood  of  Botticelli  with  his 
dainty  allegories,  or  imitating  Fra  Angelico,  who 
gives  us  "no  more  of  flesh  than  shows  soul"?  If 
Browning's  poems  embody  a  philosophy,  does  not 
*'In  Memoriam"  as  well?     If  Browning  has  his 

29 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

own  way  of  telling  a  story,  must  we  reject  it  be- 
cause it  is  not  Byron's  nor  Keats',  provided  only 
the  story  be  interesting  and  the  poet  succeed  in 
"getting  it  across"?  If  the  subject-matter  which 
he  delights  most  to  paint  be  the  complex  states  of 
human  emotion  in  the  presence  of  great  spiritual 
crises,  shall  we  object  to  the  skill  with  which  he 
does  it  and  say,  as  Satan  said  to  Adam,  "It's 
pretty,  but  is  it  Art?" 

Mr.  More,  to  whom  I  have  already  referred, 
declares  that  the  average  reader  of  to-day  is 
"ready  to  accede  to  any  legitimate  demand  upon 
his  analytical  understanding,  but  responds  slug- 
gishly, if  at  all,  to  the  readjustment  of  emotions 
necessary  for  the  sustained  enjoyment  of  such  a 
poem  as  'Paradise  Lost.' "  He  also  speaks  of  the 
poetical  mood  as  "the  translation  of  the  intellect 
from  the  particular  to  the  general  point  of  view," 
and  asserts  that  it  is  the  particularizing  habit  of 
Browning,  his  method  of  concentrating  attention 
on  the  individual,  and  that  too  at  a  particular 
moment  or  crisis,  which  forbids  "that  escape  into 
the  larger  and  more  general  vision  which  marks  the 
transition  from  prose  to  poetry." 

Admitting  that  the  appeal  of  Browning's  poetry 
is  not  the  same  as  that  of  "Paradise  Lost,"  is  the 
remainder  of  this  indictment  true?  Is  the  reader 
of  Browning  held  to  the  particular  and  prevented 
from  escaping  into  the  larger  and  freer  atmosphere 
of  poetry?  Browning's  characters  are  powerfully 
individual,  it  is  true,  but  is  their  appeal  any  the 

30 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

less  universal  for  that?     Was  Caliban  the  last  to 
create    God    in    his    own    image?     Was    Bishop 
Blougram  the  only  modernist  who  has  hesitated 
to  cut  loose  from  tradition?     Is  Cleon  alone  in 
refusing  the  message  for  which  his  heart  hungers, 
merely  because  he  despises  the  medium  through 
which  it  comes?     To  be  sure,  this  sort  of  poetry 
is  not  the  same  as  that  found  in  the  dedication  of 
"The  Ring  and  The  Book."    Its  emotional  appeal 
is  less  direct,  more  intellectual.     None  the  less  the 
appeal  is  not  to  our  analytical  reason,  but  to  our 
imaginative  sympathy.     The  method  of  the  poet 
is  that  of  the  artist,  namely,  the  embodiment  of  the 
general  in  the  particular,  the  depicting  of  an  indi- 
vidual who  through  the  very  self-identity  of  his 
individuality   becomes   a   type.     The   appeal   is, 
first  of  all,  to  our  feeling  of  identity  with  the  type, 
through  which  we  recognize  and  interpret  much 
that  was  obscure  in  our  own  feelings  and  fate. 
To  say  this  is  not  poetry  is  to  object  to  the  "Ihad" 
because  it  is  not  the  lyrics  of  Sappho,  or  to  reject 
"Prometheus   Unbound"   because   it   is   not   the 
"Skylark." 

In  point  of  fact,  we  seem  to  have  come  here  upon 
the  old  debate  between  the  realist  and  the  impres- 
sionist in  art.  The  latter  maintains  that  since  the 
object  of  art  is  universal,  the  marks  of  the  particu- 
lar in  its  subject  should  be  obhterated  as  much  as 
possible.  Since  the  purpose  of  the  artist  is  to 
awaken  an  emotion  in  the  beholder,  it  is  necessary 
only  that  those  objects  which  have  called  forth 

31 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  HKOWNING  LOVER 

tlu'  sanio  cmolioii  in  tlic  l)ira.st  of  the  artist  be 
sii^'iCoslod,  ralluM-  than  (K'pictod.  Starling  with 
tliis  j)hilosoi)h\',  the  (.levehjpnient  of  Futurism  is 
entirely  logical.  The  noted  painting  of  the 
"Nude  Descending  a  Staircase,"  while  assuredly 
not  suggestive  in  the  old,  crude,  fleshly  sense, 
might  perhaps — if  we  were  instructed — he  entirely 
competent  to  suggest  to  the  observer  the  emotions 
with  which  the  artist  gazed  upon  the  original. 
What  the  artist  has  really  undertaken  to  do  is  to 
paint,  not  the  object,  but  the  emotion. 

The  realist,  on  the  other  hand,  bases  his  art  on 
the  conviction  that  it  is  only  by  being  entirely  and 
particularly  individual  that  anything  in  nature 
becomes  a  type  of  the  general.  That  man  is  the 
most  truly  representative  of  humankind  whose 
personality  is  most  developed,  who  is  most  dis- 
tinctively and  thoroughly  individual.  It  is  only 
because  Abraham's  faith  was  so  unique  in  its 
vividness  and  entire  self-surrender  that  Abraham 
becomes  the  type  and  father  of  the  faithful.  It 
is  only  because  Hamlet's  problem  is  so  concrete 
and  definite  that  his  vacillation  and  self-distrust 
become  a  mirror  of  human  weakness  and  slack- 
ness of  purpose.  It  is  just  the  power  to  see  the 
all  in  little,  "from  a  dewdrop  to  educe  the  world," 
that  makes  the  artist. 

The  truth  which  underlies  impressionism  seems 
to  be  simply  this,  that  art  is  not  photography, 
mere  accuracy  of  reproduction.  Its  task  is  to 
bring  out  what  is  essential;  to  reproduce  a  mood, 

32 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

an  emotion,  a  spiritual  meaning,  which  the  ob- 
server might  overlook,  but  which  is  plain  to  the 
soul  of  the  artist.  Browning  himself  has  ex- 
pressed the  principle  most  clearly  through  the 
mouth  of  Lippo,  and  with  a  passion  which  indi- 
cates the  significance  of  the  words  to  his  own 
soul: 

"For  don't  you  mark?  we're  made  so  that  we  love 

First  when  we  see  them  painted,  things  we  have  passed 

Perhaps  a  hundred  times  nor  cared  to  see; 

And  so  they  are  better,  painted — better  to  us, 

Which  is  the  same  thing.     Art  was  given  for  that; 

God  uses  us  to  help  each  other  so. 

Lending  our  minds  out.     Have  you  noticed,  now. 

Your  cullion's  hanging  face.?    A  bit  of  chalk. 

And  trust  me  that  you  should,  though !    How  much 

more 
If  I  drew  higher  things  with  the  same  truth! 
That  were  to  take  the  Prior's  pulpit-place. 
Interpret  God  to  all  of  you!" 

The  pathway  to  this  goal  lies  between  the  Scylla 
of  a  barren  realism,  on  the  one  hand,  which  sinks 
all  ideal  significance  in  mere  accuracy  of  detail;  and 
the  Charybdis  of  a  bodiless  emotionalism,  on  the 
other,  seeking  to  portray  an  abstract  significance 
unrelated  to  anything  which  the  eye  hath  seen  or 
the  ear  heard.  In  the  first  case  we  have  gained 
nothing,  since  the  artist  has  shown  us  nothing 
which  the  dullest  might  not  see  for  himself.  In 
the  second  case  one  is  reminded  of  that  scholastic 
philosopher  of  the  "nominalist"  school  who  asked 
his  pupils  to  bring  him  fruit:  they  brought  pears 
and  apples,  when  the  master  explained  that  these 

33 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  B1U)WNING  LOVER 

were  fruits— whixX  he  desirocl  was  fruit-iii-generiil. 
A  Cubist  ju'tist  iiiighl  have  supplied  him! 

I  luive  inadvortenlly  wandered  a  good  way  into 
tlie  field  of  artistic  criticism,  wherein  no  doubt  I 
have  displayed  a  lamentable  ignorance — a  bufTalo 
in  the  temple!  What  I  have  been  trying  to  do  in 
all  this  talk  of  matters  too  high  for  me  is  to  explain 
what  I  mean  by  insisting  that  Browning  is  an 
artist  first  and  a  thinker,  a  philosopher,  afterward. 
I  am  trying,  with  an  obscurity  perchance  more 
involved  than  the  poet's  own,  to  say,  first,  that 
Browning  seems  to  me  to  be  interested  mainly  in 
making  us  see  what  he  has  seen  in  the  w^orld  rather 
than  in  persuading  us  to  think  about  it  as  he 
thinks — a  thing  which  I  take  to  be  the  true  aim  of 
all  art  and  of  poetry  not  least;  and,  second,  that 
he  seems  to  me  to  have  been  not  altogether  unsuc- 
cessful in  this  aim. 

m 

Of  course  it  is  required,  first  of  all,  in  an  artist 
that  his  work  be  found  beautiful.  It  is  likewise 
needful  that  it  hold  somewhat  of  human  interest. 
The  defenders  of  "Art  for  Art's  sake"  have 
poured  their  scorn  on  the  Philistinism  which  wants 
a  picture  to  "tell  a  story"  and  can  enjoy  only 
program  music.  But  even  the  Fifth  Symphony 
gains  significance  through  the  idea  of  "Fate 
knocking  at  the  door,"  and  Raphael's  Madonnas 
would  lose  in  power  if  not  in  loveliness  did  the 
beholder    know    nothing    of    the    gospel    story. 

34 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

Inquiry  concerning  the  artist's  method,  his  skill 
in  the  mastery  of  his  materials,  comes  last  of  all. 

Of  the  human  interest  in  Browning's  poetry 
volumes  have  been,  might  still  be  written.  As  he 
told  us  in  "Sordello,"  humanity  was  his  first  love; 
we  need  no  telling  that  it  was  his  last.  He  ob- 
served men  and  women  as  Burns  observed  the 
daisy  or  Wordsworth  the  small  celandine.  He 
thrilled  with  the  interest  of  human  happenings  as 
his  fellowpoet's 

.    .    .  heart  with  pleasure  fills 
And  dances  with  the  daffodils. 

Wordsworth  finds  his  humble  neighbors  of  the 
Lake  district  worth  observing,  their  simple  doings 
worth  telling,  but  he  has  small  interest  in  human- 
ity at  large.  Like  his  own  Lucy,  he  "dwelt  among 
untrodden  ways,"  and  heard  only  as  an  undertone 
welling  up  through  the  harmonies  of  nature, 

The  still,  sad  music  of  humanity, 
Nor  harsh  nor  grating,  though  of  ample  power 
To  chasten  and  subdue. 

It  was  his  lack  of  faith  in  humanity,  his  belief  that 
"The  world  is  too  much  with  us,"  which  trans- 
formed the  early  enthusiasm  inspired  by  the 
French  Revolution  into  the  disillusionment  of  the 
settled  Tory,  and  gave  rise  to  Browning's  "The 
Lost  Leader." 

Tennyson  likewise  dwelt  somewhat  apart  from 
humankind.  He  fled  from  the  celebrity-hunters 
who  haunted  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  could  with 

35 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A   HllOWNING  LOVER 

(liHiciilly  be  lured  to  visit  Ia)iu1oii.  The  human 
interest  in  Tennyson,  aceordingly,  is  more  ab- 
straet.  It  is  with  humanity  at  hirge  that  he 
is  eoneerned,  its  problems  of  faith,  its  social 
ideals,  its  general  welfare.  Though  he  loves 
to  tell  a  simple  tale,  though  occasional  mono- 
logues like  "The  Northern  Farmer"  show  that 
he  could  conceive  a  striking  individual  tv^pe,  yet, 
in  the  main,  his  mind  moves  in  the  more  ab- 
stract realm.  Of  the  generation  that  produced 
Kingsley  and  ^Morris  and  Carlyle  and  Ruskin,  he 
is  only  half  conscious  that  there  is  a  social  problem. 
He  could  write  "Locksley  Hall"  and  the  opening 
stanzas  of  "Maud"  and  yet  be  incapable  of  sym- 
pathizing with  the  spirit  of  bitter  social  revolt,  the 
"red  fool-fury  of  the  Seine."  His  characteriza- 
tions tend  to  become  bloodless  abstractions  of 
ethical  principles,  as  in  the  "Idylls."  It  is  when 
he  depicts  a  simple  human  emotion,  clothing  it  in 
all  its  power  of  pathos  or  of  passion,  that  he  rises 
to  his  greatest  height. 

Browning,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  dweller  in 
cities,  a  lover  of  the  thronged  streets  and  crowded 
ways.  He  finds  his  field  in  the  individual  human 
soul,  particularly  in  moments  of  supreme  moral 
struggle,  in  the  great  spiritual  crises  whence  a  man 
emerges  saved  or  lost.  He  is  even  less  conscious 
than  Tennyson  of  the  social  movements  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  though  his  social  sympathies 
are  sound.  For  him  poverty  and  struggle  are  not 
so  much  social  facts  as  the  materials  out  of  which 

36 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

the  individual  is  to  construct  his  life.  The  signifi- 
cance of  this  individual  note  for  the  interpretation 
of  life,  even  in  the  presence  of  social  problems,  is 
a  matter  for  later  consideration.  It  is  of  moment 
now  to  note  that  in  breadth  of  human  interest  and 
in  power  to  delineate  character  Browning  is  to  be 
compared  and  contrasted  with  the  great  master- 
singers  of  modern  literature,  with  Goethe  and 
Shakespeare  and  Dante,  rather  than  with  his 
contemporaries . 

It  is  true  that  with  them  we  stand  in  the  presence 
of  universal  genius.  They  are  everywhere  master 
of  their  materials.  Browning's  genius  has  no  such 
range.  A  Pilgrim  through  Hell  to  Paradise, 
whose  experience  should  embody  the  whole 
spiritual  history  of  the  human  soul;  a  Doctor 
Faustus  who  should  gather  up  into  himself  the 
experiences  of  universal  humanity,  lie  entirely 
beyond  his  scope.  To  behold  all  the  world  a 
stage  and  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players; 
and  to  people  that  stage  with  a  host  of  characters, 
each  bearing  his  own  distinct  individuality  and 
playing  his  own  part  amid  the  shifting  scenes  of  this 
complex  drama  of  life,  is  equally  beyond  his  power. 
None  the  less  Browning's  universal  sympathy 
makes  him  next  of  kin,  while  in  his  own  chosen 
field  of  the  individual  soul,  of  the  hidden  drama 
whose  action  takes  place  within  a  man's  own  heart, 
he  stands  without  a  peer.  It  is  his  gift  to  interpret 
the  spiritual  crises  of  life,  to  individualize  them 
as  the  experience  of  distinct  and  concrete  person- 

37 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

alities;  to  cause  every  man  to  lay  hare  his  heart 
before  us,  revealing  all  the  manifold  complexity 
of  his  spiritual  conflicts  and  moral  judgments, 
while  at  the  same  time  making  clear  the  essential 
character  of  that  ultimate  act  in  which  these  issue 
and  find  their  unification.  As  has  repeatedly  been 
said,  he  is  essentially  a  dramatist;  but  his  interest 
is  less  in  the  conflict  of  wills,  or  of  the  will  with 
fate,  which  constitutes  the  essence  of  objective 
drama,  than  in  the  inner  and  subjective  conflicts 
within  a  man's  own  will;  in  which  the  impulses  and 
desires,  the  ideals  and  passions,  the  higher  and 
lower  elements  of  his  own  nature 

.  .  .  rap  and  knock  and  enter  in  our  soul, 
Take  hands  and  dance  there,  a  fantastic  ring, 

on  the  stage  of  the  soul  itself. 

It  must  never  be  forgotten,  however,  that  in 
these  mighty  dramas  of  human  passion,  from  the 
poems  of  character  which  make  up  not  only  the 
"Men  and  Women"  but  also  by  far  the  greater 
number  of  the  "Idylls"  and  "Romances"  and 
"Lyrics"  to  the  poet's  most  ambitious  studies  in 
"Paracelsus"  and  "Sordello"  and  "The  Ring  and 
The  Book,"  it  is  the  artist  who  speaks,  not  prima- 
rily the  moralist  or  the  philosopher.  This  is  as 
true  of  "Blougram"  or  "Lippo"  as  of  "A  Face"  or 
"Love  Among  the  Ruins."  The  jealous  girl  in 
"In  a  Laboratory,"  the  dying  Bishop  of  "St. 
Praxed's,"  the  heartless  duke  in  "My  Last 
Duchess,"  are  simply  painted  for  us  without  a 

38 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

word  of  comment.  We  feel,  indeed,  that  in  the 
moment  of  creation  the  poet  felt  an  artistic  sym- 
pathy with  these  creatures  of  his  genius.  They 
are  human  beings,  the  subjects  of  human  expe- 
rience. They  are  of  like  passions  as  we  are,  and 
just  the  revelation  of  the  ways  in  which  the  human 
soul  reacts  in  certain  moods  and  under  certain 
conditions  is  itself  a  suflScient  contribution  to  our 
knowledge  of  life.  Any  moralizings  which  the 
occasion  requires  we  may  supply  for  ourselves,  the 
poet  will  not  do  it  for  us.  At  the  same  time  we 
are  not  left  without  the  material  for  that  moral 
judgment.  In  the  case  of  the  jealous  girl  seeking 
a  poison  with  which  to  put  her  rival  out  of  the  way, 
the  glimpses  that  are  given  us  of  the  atmosphere 
of  heartless  coquetry  with  which  she  was  sur- 
rounded and  the  scornful  contempt  she  has  suffered 
bid  us  judge  her  not  too  harshly  or  unsympatheti- 
cally,  while  at  the  same  time  we  are  left  under  no 
illusion  as  to  the  character  of  her  mad  passion  of 
hate.  In  "My  Last  Duchess"  the  icy  refinement, 
the  cold  culture,  the  heartless  pride  and  inhuman- 
ity of  the  duke  are  thrown  into  high  relief  by  the 
glimpse  he  himself  gives  us  of  the  sweet  and  simple- 
hearted  girl  whose  too-ready  smile  and  gentle 
courtesy  were  her  undoing. 

IV 

And  still  I  have  not  reached  my  goal;  I  have 
not  proved  to  the  skeptical  that  this  is  poetry.  It 
may  be  art,  it  may  be  dramatic,  it  is  undoubtedly 

39 


CONFKSSIONS  OF  A  BHOWNINCi  LOVER 

iiilorostiii^'  and  skilU'iiIly  done,  hut  it  nuiy  likewise 
be  more  nearly  related  lo  the  essay  or  the  novel 
thiin  to  poetry.  Has  it  the  essential  beauty  and 
passion,  the  imaginative  power  appealing  directly 
to  the  emotions,  whieh  we  associate  with  the  idea 
of  poetry?  I  can  speak  only  for  myself.  I  find 
such  power  not  only  in  the  lyric  j^assages  I  have 
already  referred  to,  but  in  whole  cantos  of  "The 
Ring  and  The  Book,"  to  say  nothing  of  such  in- 
terpretations of  dee])  human  experience  as  "An- 
drea" and  "Karshish"  and  "Abt  Vogler,"  of  the 
lofty  reaches  of  "The  Last  Ride  Together"  or  of 
"Love  in  a  Life"  and  "Life  in  a  Love." 

Matthew  Arnold  has  taught  us  that  no  art  is 
truly  great,  no  matter  how  skillfully  wrought, 
unless  its  subject-matter  be  worthy.  We  do  not 
always  sufficiently  consider  that  the  beauty  of 
any  work  of  art  may  inhere  chiefly  in  the  subject- 
matter  rather  than  in  the  execution.  It  must,  of 
course,  be  sufficiently  embodied.  No  beauty  of 
subject  can  make  up  for  crudeness  of  drawing  and 
color,  for  slovenliness  or  lack  of  skill  in  the  treat- 
ment. The  subject  is  the  same  in  all  the  Madon- 
nas, whether  that  rigid  and  wooden  work  in  Santa 
Maria  Novello,  attributed  to  Cimabue,  or  the 
smooth  and  saccharine  ])ictures  of  Carlo  Dolci; 
the  prettily  thoughtful  though  exquisitely  wrought 
paintings  of  Andrea,  or  the  soul-moving  master- 
pieces of  Raphael.  The  essential  difference  be- 
tween the  artists  is  in  the  depth  of  their  insight 
and  the  power  of  their  treatment.     On  the  other 

40 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

hand,  no  skill  of  craftsmanship  can  atone  for  lack 

of  beauty  or  worth  in  the  subject-matter.     Even 

Michelangelo  could  carve  a  Leda  which  is  not 

called  to  the  attention  of  lady  visitors  to  the  Pitti 

gallery,  and  some  of  Rubens's  abominations  are 

familiar  to  everyone.     With  all  this  in  mind,  it 

remains  true  that  one  artist  impresses  us  most 

with  the  richness  of  beauty  and  significance  in  his 

conception,  another  with  his  mastery  of  his  craft. 

'It    is    this    distinction    which    Browning    himself 

embodied  in  his  contrast  between  Raphael  and 

Andrea : 

I  can  fancy  how  he  did  it  all, 

Pouring  his  soul,  with  kings  and  popes  to  see. 

Reaching,  that  heaven  might  so  replenish  him, 

Above  and  through  his  art — for  it  gives  way; 

That  arm  is  wrongly  put — and  there  again — 

A  fault  to  pardon  in  the  drawing's  lines, 

Its  body,  so  to  speak:  its  soul  is  right, 

He  means  right — that,  a  child  may  understand. 

Still,  what  an  arm!  and  I  could  alter  it: 

But  all  the  play,  the  insight  and  the  stretch — 

Out  of  me,  out  of  me ! 

This  distinction  between  artists  is  perhaps  even 
more  significant  in  poetry  than  in  painting.  Poe, 
for  example,  for  all  his  genuine  feeling  for  beauty 
and  his  unrivaled  dexterity  in  the  manipulation 
of  words,  has  never  seriously  impressed  mankind 
as  a  great  poet,  because  of  a  certain  shallowness  of 
sentiment  and  morbidness  of  temper  which  make 
themselves  felt  in  his  finest  flights.  Burns,  or 
even  James  Whitcomb  Riley  at  his  best — is  it 
sacrilege  to  bracket  them  together  .^^ — without  a 

41 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

tithe  of  Foe's  actual  skill,  will  nevertheless  outlive 
liiin  ill  the  hearts  of  men  by  reason  of  the  greater 
soundness  of  their  humanity,  the  simple  appeal  of 
their  message. 

r  The  beauty  of  Browning's  poetry  is  to  be  found 
in  the  substance  rather  than  the  form,  the  soul 

[rather  than  the  body,  of  his  work.  By  substance 
I  mean  not  subject-matter  alone,  but  the  con- 
ceptions, tlie  point  of  view,  the  imagery,  the 
atmosphere,  which  together  sometimes  so  thrill 
the  reader  with  their  wealth  of  beauty  that  he 
forgets  entirely  the  medium  through  whicli  the 
impression  is  made. 

The  other  kind  of  poetry  has  perhaps  a  wider 
appeal.  If  there  are  comparatively  few  even 
among  cultivated  readers  who  find  their  greatest 
enjoyment  in  the  epic,  in  Milton  or  Dante,  there 
are  very  many  to  whom  lyric  poetry  affords  an 
abiding  joy.  The  matchless  grace  of  form  in 
"Midsummernight's  Dream"  charms  us  without 
regard  to  the  substance  of  the  verse.  Or,  to  come 
to  the  nineteenth  century,  such  poetry  as  Shelley's 
"Cloud"  certainly  lives  in  its  own  right.  Could 
anything  exceed  the  limpid  music  of  the  lines, 

That  orbed  maiden  with  white  fire  laden 

Whom  mortals  call  the  moon, 
Glides  glimmering  o'er  my  fleece-like  floor. 

By  the  midnight  breezes  strewn. 
And  wherever  the  beat  of  her  unseen  feet, 

\Miich  only  the  angels  hear. 
May  have  broken  the  woof  of  my  tent's  thin  roof 

The  stars  peep  behind  her  and  peer — 

4i2 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

can  we  not  hear  the  soundless  pattering  of  fairy 
feet  whose  least  fall  breaks  the  gauze-web  of  the 
summer  mist?  The  fancy  is  quaint  and  suggestive, 
and  the  imagery  lovely;  but  both  alike  would  fail 
to  move  us  so  deeply  did  the  verse  not  catch  the 
ear  and  carry  the  imagination  fairly  to  elf-land  by 
its  delicate  rhythm.  Indeed,  Professor  Trent 
goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  music  is  everywhere 
the  chief  thing  in  Shelley.  If  it  be  so,  God  be 
praised  for  its  loveliness,  which  sings  many  a 
faery  fancy  into  our  hearts  to  lighten  the  dreari- 
ness of  a  work-worn  world. 

Kipling  has  declared  that  there  are  only  five 
lines  amid  all  the  boundless  vast  of  English  verse 
which  are  pure  vision — the  rest  is  merely  poetry. 
The  first  are  from  "Kubla  Khan": 

A  savage  place,  as  holy  and  enchanted 

As  e'er  beneath  a  waning  moon  was  haunted 

By  woman  wailing  for  her  demon  lover 

— lines  whose  drugged  and  languorous  sweetness 
affects  the  senses  like  incense  from  an  Oriental 
temple.     The  other  two  are  from  Keats: 

Charmed  magic  casements,  opening  on  the  form 
Of  perilous  seas,  in  faery  lands  forlorn, 

where  the  words  toll  like  a  silver  bell.  I  am  con- 
tent with  Kipling's  verdict.  Surely,  music  and 
magic  were  never  so  wedded  in  sound  and  sense. 
It  is  impossible  to  say  that  the  effect  is  wrought 
only  through  the  beauty  of  the  lines;  the  weird 

43 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

suggest ivenoss  of  tlie  iiniigory  charms  us  as  well. 
Such  beauty  is  its  owu  excuse  for  being.  One 
does  not  ask  in  such  a  case  what  the  poem  means, 
what  spiritual  lesson  it  conveys;  one  only  catches 
one's  breath  and  lifts  up  one's  heart.  Keats  was 
right : 

Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty: 

That  is  all  ye  know  or  need  to  know. 

If  you  get  simple  heauly  nnd  nauj^ht  else. 

You  get  about  the  best  Ihin^f  God  invents; 

That's  somewhat,  and  you'll  lind  the  soul  you've  missed 

Within  yourself  when  you  return  him  thanks. 

("Fra  Lippo  Lippi.") 

It  is  not  this  sort  of  beauty  we  find  in  Brown- 
ing's poetry.  The  beauty  of  "My  Star,"  of  the 
tribute  to  Shelley  in  "Memorabilia,"  the  exquisite 
tenderness  of  "One  Word  More,"  the  sense  of 
atmosphere,  of  evening  restfulness  in  "Love 
Among  the  Ruins,"  find  adequate  expression  in  the 
verse,  but  the  reader  is  conscious  chiefly  of  the 
beauty  of  thought  and  feeling,  rather  than  of  the 
form.  It  is  true  that  in  many  single  passages, 
both  in  the  poems  just  referred  to  and  in  many 
others,  the  vision  of  the  poet  rises  to  the  utmost 
height,  and  the  music  of  the  verse  matches  the 
beauty  of  the  thought  conveyed;  but  that  other 
beauty,  of  conception  and  imagery,  of  sympathy 
and  passion,  is  everywhere.  Whole  pages  of 
"Paracelsus"  and  "Sordello"  are  fairly  weighed 
down  with  excess  of  beauty.  In  "Saul"  it  rises 
to  very  ecstasy,  as  where  the  young  singer  awakes 

44 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

In  the  gray  dewy  covert,  while  Hebron  upheaves 
The  dawn  struggling  with  night  on  his  shoulder, 

and  Kidron  retrieves 
Slow  the  damage  of  yesterday's  sunshine. 

And  again  in  the  passage  which  tells  how  the 
sympathetic  passion  awakened  in  nature  by  the 
revelation  of  Divine  Love  made  to  the  king 
through  the  heart  of  the  boy  was  slowly  quelled : 

Not  so  much,  but  I  saw  it  die  out  in  the  day's  tender 

birth; 
In  the  gathered  intensity  brought  to  the  gray  of  the 

hills; 
In  the  shuddering  forests'  held  breath;  in  the  sudden 

wind-thrills; 

The  same  stared  in  the  white  humid  faces  upturned  by 

the  flowers; 
The  same  worked  in  the  heart  of  the  cedar  and  moved 

the  vine-bowers: 
And  the  little  brooks  witnessing  murmured,  persistent 

and  low. 
With  their  obstinate,  all  but  hushed  voices, 

"E'en  so,  it  is  so"! 

My  own  conviction  is  that  if  all  the  theological 
and  philosophical  tours  de  force  about  which  the 
discussions  of  the  critics  and  the  women's  clubs 
have  raged  for  fifty  years  were  eliminated,  there 
would  still  remain  of  Browning's  poems  a  volume 
of  verse  which  for  sheer  beauty  and  intrinsic  ar- 
tistic power — the  soul  of  beauty,  not  its  flesh — 
would  be  suflScient  to  assure  him  high  rank  and 
an  abiding  place  among  English  poets.  If  it  were 
all  collected  in  a  single  volume,  it  is  a  question  if 

45 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

any  similar  colloction  from  the  poetry  of  Words- 
wort  li  or  Tennyson  would  be  found  to  contain  so 
mueh  of  warm  human  emotion  or  rich  poetic 
imagery,  of  genuine  and  compelling  beauty  of 
thought  and  feeling. 

Other  considerations  than  that  of  simple  beauty, 
of  course,  come  into  play  in  much  of  Browning's 
work  which  has  abiding  interest  for  the  reader. 
The  poems  that  deal  with  passion  and  jealousy 
and  envy  and  hatred,  which  embody  such  char- 
acters as  the  monk  of  the  "Spanish  Cloister,"  or 
the  husband  of  "A  Forgiveness,"  or  Count  Guido 
Franceschini,  are  poetry  not  by  virtue  of  artistic 
beauty  but  of  emotional  intensity  and  power. 
Even  the  grotesqueries — "Holy  Cross  Day," 
"Sludge,"  "Caliban,"  "Master  Hugues,"  and 
others — have  an  abiding  worth.  To  say  they  are 
not  poetry  is  merely  to  draw  an  arbitrary  line 
through  all  literature.  They  are  wrought  from 
the  artist's  point  of  view;  they  are  skillfully  done 
withal;  and  they  grip  the  imagination  and  convey 
truth  by  direct  emotional  and  artistic  appeal 
rather  than  by  argumentation.  If  that  be  prose, 
make  the  most  of  it !  It  may  be  that  some  of  them 
are  comparable  to  the  gargoyles  of  Notre  Dame 
or  the  Imp  of  Lincoln  Cathedral  rather  than  to  the 
Pieta  or  the  Moses  of  Michelangelo,  but  some  of 
us  would  rather  not  lose  even  those  lighter  pro- 
ducts of  a  sculptor's  chisel. 

On  the  other  hand,  let  us  cheerfully  admit 
defects.     Like  his  own  Raphael,  the  poet  reaches 

46 


OF  THE  POET  AS  ARTIST 

above  and  through  his  art.  There  are  crude 
and  uncouth  rhymes,  commonplace  and  unpoetic 
words  and  phrases: 

Fee,  faw,  fum,  bubble  and  squeak, 
Blessedest  Thursday's  the  fat  of  the  week. 

What  porridge  had  John  Keats? 

Irks  care  the  crop-full  bird,  frets  doubt  the  maw- 
crammed  beast? 

Examples  might  be  multiplied.  It  should  be  said, 
indeed,  Chesterton  has  vigorously  said,  that  fre- 
quently the  use  of  such  apparent  gaucheries  is 
part  of  the  poet's  method  of  getting  the  effects 
at  which  he  aims,  as  Strauss  and  Debussy  and 
Schoenberg  employ  dissonances  on  the  road  to 
harmony  which  ought  to  make  Bach  and  Beetho- 
ven turn  in  their  graves.  So  far  as  I  am  con- 
cerned, however,  I  am  no  adiocatus  diaboli,  I  hold 
no  brief  for  these  things:  let  them  be  cast  as 
rubbish  to  the  void.  And  with  them  go  much 
involved  construction,  tedious,  overloaded  sen- 
tences, much  display  of  learning,  to  say  nothing  of 
all  the  prosy  philosophizing  already  discarded. 
Had  Browning  possessed  the  patience  or  skill  or 
artistic  sensitiveness  to  ehminate  these  defects, 
his  poetry  would  have  gained  in  power.  But 
what  would  one  have?  Homer  nods.  Shake- 
speare is  ribald.  Wordsworth  descends  to  worse 
than  commonplace  prose.  Tennyson  often  is 
"faultily  faultless,  icily  regular,  splendidly  null." 

47 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  I.OVER 

So  Raphiiers  cartoons  are  not  always  impressive. 
Angelo's  "Day,"  on  the  Medici  lonib,  twists  his 
head  in  defiance  of  anatomy.  Rodin,  as  well  as 
the  great  Florentine,  has  left  much  half-finished 
marble. 

Browning's  songs  seldom  sing  themselves.  His 
lines  do  not  readily  fasten  themselves  in  the 
memory.  His  ear  is  deficient  in  rhythm — we  are 
told  his  own  physical  pulse  was  imperceptible. 
All  tliis  is  merely  to  admit  that  the  poet  is  human, 
and  works,  like  other  artists,  sometimes  by  main 
strength.  But  it  is  to  be  said  that  when  he  is 
swept  along  on  the  full  tide  of  his  genius  these 
defects  disappear;  and  the  verse,  in  "Saul"  and 
"Cleon"  and  "Abt  Vogler"  and  many  another 
passage  of  matchless  beauty  and  power,  marches 
with  a  triumphant  swing  which  bears  the  reader 
with  it  oblivious  of  the  means  whereby  the  will  of 
the  poet  is  wrought  upon  his  soul. 

It  is  as  an  artist,  therefore,  that  I  find  my  en- 
joyment in  the  poet;  an  artist  with  a  serious  pur- 
pose withal,  whose  message  is  embedded  in  his 
art.  The  message  itself,  as  Kipling  says,  is 
another  story. 


48 


CHAPTER  II 
OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

The  statement  of  my  change  of  heart  with 
regard  to  Browning,  when  I  came  to  look  upon 
him  as  first  of  all  an  artist  and  only  secondarily  a 
philosopher,  has  led  me  a  good  ways  afield  into 
a  discussion  of  the  principles  of  art.  What  I  have 
sought  to  do  is  to  justify  my  own  enthusiasm  for 
Browning's  poetry  as  poetry;  for  its  tropical 
wealth  and  profusion  of  beauty,  for  its  unrivaled 
human  interest,  for  the  spiritual  inspiration 
afforded  by  its  outlook  upon  life.  It  remains  to 
tell  something  of  the  lessons  I  have  learned 
from  it. 

But  at  the  risk  of  talking  more  about  myself  and 
my  notions  than  about  the  poet  who  is  the  osten- 
sible occasion  of  these  outpourings  I  cannot  tor- 
bear  to  dwell  a  little  further  on  the  spirit  and 
temper  of  which  I  have  been  speaking — on  the 
essential  worth  of  the  artistic  as  distinguished 
from  the  philosophic  viewpoint.  I  might,  no 
doubt,  have  learned  it  from  Shakespeare  or 
Keats.  But,  mirabile  dictu,  I  for  one  learned  it 
from  the  very  poet  who  is  universally  supposed 
to  have  subordinated  the  emotional  to  the  intel- 
lectual, to  have  been  a  thinker  rather  than  a 
poet,  to  have  aimed  first  of  all  at  proclaiming  a 

49 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

message    rather  tlian  at   awakening  the  sense  of 
beaiily. 

I  make  haste  to  concede  to  those  who  have  been 
bred  in  the  tradition,  that  Browning  has  a  message, 
a  significant  one,  in  wliich  he  himself  was  in- 
tensely interested,  and  to  which  I  hope  eventually 
to  get  round.  But  the  notion  that  he  chose  the 
artistic  way  to  declare  his  truth,  and  that  he  must 
be  approached  in  a  spirit  not  essentially  other 
than  that  in  which  we  read  Shakespeare  or  look 
at  Raphael's  Madonnas,  has  been  received  with 
such  astonished  incredulity  when  I  have  ven- 
tured to  broach  it  among  the  devotees  of  culture 
that  I  am  constrained  to  give  a  further  reason  for 
the  faith  that  is  in  me.  The  first  lesson  I,  at  any 
rate,  have  learned  from  Browning  is  the  lesson  of 
sitting  at  the  feet  of  an  artist;  learning  to  see 
through  his  eyes,  to  catch  his  vision,  to  adopt  his 
point  of  view,  to  let  myself  go  wuth  him  until  he 
has  wrought  his  will  upon  me,  careless  what  comes 
of  it;  confident  that  if  he  has  a  message  for  the 
world  this  is  the  only  way  to  get  it. 

I 

The  artistic  spirit  has  always  been  distrusted 
by  the  moralists,  from  Plato  to  Tolstoy.  Nor  is 
the  reason  far  to  seek.  To  begin  with,  the 
artists  themselves  have  in  the  main  been  a  sorry 
lot,  unconventional,  not  to  say  Bohemian,  in  their 
mode  of  life;  creatures  of  impulse  and  emotion 
rather  than  of  reason  and  judgment;  inclined  to 

50 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

a  sad  lack  of  reverence  for  bourgeois  standards  of 
taste  and  morals.  That  Saul,  the  son  of  a  highly 
respectable  middle-class  father  of  considerable 
means,  should  be  found  among  the  prophets  has 
always  been  considered  rather  a  disgrace. 

Then,  too,  the  ideas  advanced  by  the  artist 
have  been  lacking  in  that  practical  quality  which 
appeals  to  the  essentially  Philistine  public.  He 
has  been  prone  to  the  dilettante  attitude  toward 
life,  or  when  he  inclined  to  take  himself  seriously 
his  pronouncements  have  been  too  visionary  and 
idealistic  to  be  worthy  of  consideration  by  serious 
men.  Like  Shelley,  he  is  apt  to  be  a  "beautiful 
and  ineffectual  angel,  beating  in  the  void  his  lu- 
minous wings  in  vain." 

Finally,  the  things  in  which  the  artist  is  inter- 
ested, which  are  the  very  breath  of  life  to  him,  are 
of  the  sort  which  butter  no  parsnips.  To  sing  a 
snatch,  to  paint  a  flower,  to  carve  a  Venus,  while 
all  around  are  men  and  women  starving  for 
bread,  while  enemies  threaten  the  fatherland,  while 
sinners  are  dying  in  their  sins,  is,  like  Nero,  to 
fiddle  while  Rome  is  burning. 

One  is  tempted  at  this  point  to  turn  aside  to  see 
if  a  good  word  might  not  be  said  for  Nero.  I 
sometimes  wonder  that  Browning  himself  did  not 
take  it  up — he  who  was  ever  prone  to  discover 
what  those  whom  all  men  despised  might  find  in 
their  hearts  to  say  for  themselves.  We  may  yet 
expect  Chesterton  to  convince  us  that  the  em- 
peror was  a  grossly  maligned  and  much  misunder- 

51 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

stood  individual,  or  G.  B.  S.  to  turn  our  ideas 
topsy-turvy  with  a  play  on  the  i)hilosophic  soul 
who  when  infinite  disaster  overwhelmed  the 
Eternal  City,  and  nothing  could  be  done  to  stay 
her  fate,  sought  consolation  in  music,  or  who,  rapt 
to  ecstatic  heights  by  the  very  breadth  and  sweep 
of  the  tragedy,  endeavored  to  convey  to  others 
in  deathless  song  the  emotions  through  which  the 
soul-cleansing  significance  of  the  event  trans- 
formed life  itself  for  the  singer.  I  do  not  myself 
insist  on  this  point  of  view.  Nero  was  doubtless 
a  half-mad  degenerate,  who  found  an  idiotic 
enjoyment  in  the  spectacle  and  whose  paranoiac 
egoism  imagined  none  other  could  so  fitly  enshrine 
the  epic  tragedy  in  verse.  But  he  is  not  for  that 
reason  the  fitter  type  of  those  who  find  pleasure 
and  meaning  in  the  beauty  and  joy  of  the  world. 

Possibly  Nero  is  too  savage  to  stand  as  the  type 
of  the  artistic  temperament  in  the  thought  of  the 
average  moralist,  but  none  the  less  there  is  a  pop- 
ular feeling  that  the  artistic  spirit  is  lacking  in 
moral  earnestness,  that  it  fails  to  comprehend  the 
tremendous  seriousness  of  life.  It  is  regarded  as 
essentially  pagan  rather  than  Christian.  It  ac- 
cepts the  world  as  it  is  instead  of  striving  to 
redeem  and  reform  it.  Especially  does  this  seem 
to  be  true  of  mere  virtuosity.  Creative  art  may 
be  granted  some  place  in  the  scheme  of  things, 
but  the  art  which  simply  reproduces  or  expresses 
the  thought  of  another  seems  trivial,  a  waste 
of  ability  and   energy  which,  if  applied  to  ends 

52 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

worth  while,  might  be  of  inestimable  benefit  to 
mankind.  I  confess  to  this  feeling  in  the  presence 
of  a  crack  billiardist  or  world-famous  ballet 
dancer,  and  even  to  be  the  greatest  violinist  or 
pianist  in  the  world  seems  a  trifling  thing  com- 
pared with  the  creative  genius  of  a  Beethoven. 

But  may  we  not  recognize  an  element  of  truth 
here  without  thereby  invalidating  the  right  of  the 
artist  or  his  true  place  in  the  life  of  the  world? 
The  temptation,  the  besetting  sin  of  art  is  the 
dilettante  spirit,  as  pharisaism  is  that  of  the 
moralist.  We  may  applaud  the  zeal  which  drove 
the  traders  from  the  temple,  and  no  less  the  moral 
earnestness  which  rebukes  the  sentimental  sesthet- 
icism  of  Oscar  Wilde  or  the  license  of  the  Boul' 
Mich';  but  all  this  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
deeper  question  of  the  meaning  of  beauty  or  the 
prophetic  function  of  those  who  open  our  eyes  that 
we  may  see. 

Plato's  attitude  toward  the  artist  was  based  on 
other  grounds.  The  poets  were  to  be  excluded 
from  the  Republic  only  in  so  far  as  they  were  bad 
theologians  and  did  not  tell  the  truth.  On  the 
other  hand,  painters  and  sculptors  must  be  ac- 
counted mere  copyists  of  nature,  who  is  herself 
an  indifferent  copyist  of  the  divine  Idea.  Art, 
therefore,  stood  twice-removed  from  essential 
truth,  and  could  not  be  seriously  regarded  by  the 
philosopher.  For  this  reason  the  artists,  though 
they  bring  somewhat  of  grace  and  joy  into  life,  and 
therefore  must  be  accorded  some  place,  were  to 

53 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

be  ranked  next  above  the  laborers  Jind  artisans,  the 
Iiowors  of  wood  and  the  drawers  of  water;  while 
the  philosophers,  those  who  seek  truth,  and  truth 
alone,  as  the  chief  good,  were  to  be  obeyed  as  the 
natural  guardians  of  the  state. 

Tolstoy's  indictment  of  art  is  that  it  has  become 
a  cult,  and  has  removed  itself  from  the  sphere  of 
common  life.  The  original  contract  between  the 
laborer  and  the  artist  was  that  the  former  would 
bear  the  brunt  and  furnish  the  means  of  subsistence 
in  return  for  the  inspiration,  the  brightening  of 
life,  and  the  lightening  of  toil  which  the  latter 
should  afford  through  his  art.  But  when  the 
cultivation  of  art  elevated  the  taste  of  the  artist 
above  that  of  the  artisan,  and  so  established  an 
impassable  gulf  between  the  cultivated  soul  and 
the  horny-handed  son  of  toil,  the  contract  was 
broken.  Art  must,  therefore,  be  disciplined  and 
humbled  until  it  shall  once  more  serve  the  common 
life,  or  submit  to  be  driven  forth  from  the  world 
of  men. 

The  Puritan  temper  was  still  more  severe.  The 
Puritan  saw  in  beauty  a  snare  of  the  soul,  a  device 
of  the  Evil  One  to  lure  men  from  the  thorny  way 
of  spiritual  culture  to  tread  the  primrose  path  of 
dalliance.  Augustine  records  with  penitent  shame 
the  day  when  the  beauty  of  the  Italian  landscape 
so  entranced  his  sight  that  for  an  hour  he  forgot 
the  claims  of  the  spirit  and  neglected  to  meditate 
on  the  duty  he  owed  to  God.  The  soldiers  of 
Cromwell  who  defaced  the  abbeys  and  cathedrals 

54 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

of  England,  the  rugged  moralists  who  saw  in 
statues  only  graven  images  in  defiance  of  the  sec- 
ond commandment,  and  who  distrusted  everything 
which  added  grace  and  sweetness  to  human  life 
lest  the  souls  of  men  should  nestle  in  this  world  nor 
seek  their  rightful  home  above,  were  the  spiritual 
descendants  of  Augustine. 

Yet  herein  is  a  marvelous  thing,  that  the  men 
who  have  seen  most  deeply  into  the  essential 
meaning  and  purpose  of  life  and  have  added  the 
largest  treasure  to  the  spiritual  riches  of  the  race 
have  been  artists  at  heart — of  whom  Plato  himself 
is  not  least.  His  philosophy  is  embedded  in 
artistic  forms,  and  it  is,  in  point  of  fact,  his  artist's 
intuition  more  than  his  logical  reason  which  has 
led  him  most  deeply  into  the  truth.  The  Hebrew 
prophets  were  poets,  and  it  is  precisely  when  the 
prophetic  fire  burned  most  intensely  and  their 
visions  of  God  attained  the  loftiest  heights  that 
their  art  is  most  perfect.  If  the  plastic  arts  of 
Greece  or  the  painting  of  the  High  Renaissance 
were  not  always  accompanied  by  the  greatest 
spiritual  insight,  or  failed  to  minister  to  the  deep- 
est spiritual  needs,  it  was  not  because  of  any  in- 
herent antagonism  between  truth  and  beauty, 
but  simply  because  life  comes  to  us  only  in  frag- 
mentary glimpses,  and  mankind  forever  advances 
a  step  at  a  time,  first  one  foot  and  then  the 
other. 

It  was  Plato  himself  who  declared  the  essential 
truth  of  the  matter,  namely,  that  the  beautiful  is 

55 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWN INCJ  LONER 

at  hotloin  one  with  the  g(X)(l  uiul  the  true— that 
all  three  are  ahke  expressions  of  the  Perfection 
whicli  underlies  all  finite  existence  and  which  men 
call  God.  Scientist,  moralist,  artist,  all  alike  are 
searchers  after  God,  ministers  of  his  divine  per- 
fections, nor  can  any  one  of  them  dispense  with 
the  others.  The  scientist  desires  to  know  facts, 
the  philosopher  to  discover  their  underlying 
principles;  both  find  their  results  inextricably 
entangled  with  ethical  implications.  They  must 
either  become  moralists  or  turn  their  work  over  to 
the  moralist  to  be  completed,  to  be  used,  indeed, 
for  the  practical  and  spiritual  instruction  of  man- 
kind. Facts  and  principles  run  up  into  laws,  and 
laws  at  bottom  are  an  ethical  matter,  having  their 
root  not  in  the  barren  necessities  of  a  purposeless 
mechanism,  but  in  the  self-consistency  of  an  eternal 
Will.  To  stop  short  of  this  is  to  deny  any  signifi- 
cance whatever  to  reality  and  to  put  an  end  to  the 
possibility  not  only  of  ethics  but  of  science.  The 
attitude  of  the  average  scientist  at  this  point  is 
comparable  to  the  performance  of  that  celebrated 
hero  of  popular  song  who,  perched  on  a  lofty 
limb,  sawed  between  himself  and  the  tree. 

But  this  is  not  the  end  of  the  matter.  These 
laws,  this  underlying  Will,  are  forever  finding  ex- 
pression in  forms  which  hint  at  the  perfection  of  the 
ideal  and  so  awaken  in  men  the  sense  of  beauty.  It 
is  the  function  of  beauty  to  bear  witness  to  the 
ideal  amid  the  imperfections  of  reality  and  the 
ignorance    and    blindness    of    the    human    soul. 

56 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

Truth  makes  its  appeal  to  the  reason,  ethical 
principles  to  the  obedient  will;  beauty  appeals  to 
the  emotions.  It  awakens  love,  and  so  brings 
about  the  identification  of  man  with  the  world 
about  him,  with  the  divine  it  half -reveals  and  half- 
conceals.  The  cave  man,  ignorant  and  super- 
stitious, surrounded  by  a  hostile  nature  whose 
mysteries  filled  him  with  awe  and  fear,  what  time 
he  scratched  the  figures  of  beasts  of  the  chase  upon 
scraps  of  reindeer  bone  or  chiseled  intricate  pat- 
terns of  line  on  the  stones  which  marked  the 
burying  place  of  his  dead,  was  lifted  by  these 
fragmentary  glimpses  of  beauty  into  real  com- 
munion with  nature,  and  given  a  unity  of  spirit 
and  a  mastery  of  life  which  must  wait  many  cen- 
turies to  find  expression  in  forms  of  knowledge  or 
of  ethical  judgment. 

If  this  be  true,  then  beauty,  so  far  from  being  a 
mere  ornamental  addition  to  life,  is  a  fundamental 
necessity,  an  integral  part  of  life  itself.  By  it 
primitive  man,  chipping  his  spearheads  into  sym- 
metry and  fashioning  ornaments  of  schist  or  bone, 
bore  witness  to  his  spiritual  nature;  and  by  it  he, 
being  dead,  yet  speaketh.  It  is  the  same  spiritual 
impulse,  developed  and  trained  by  centuries  of 
struggle,  which  builds  noble  cathedrals  for  worship 
and  clothes  its  loftiest  visions  of  truth  in  forms  of 
undying  loveliness. 

The  function  of  beauty  is  twofold.  It  stands 
in  its  own  right,  bringing  brightness  and  joy  into 
life,   relieving   the   heart   weighed   down   by   the 

57 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

dullness  aiul  gray  monotony  of  every  tlay;  soften- 
ing our  j)routi,  iieree,  selfish  spirits  by  the  tender 
emotions  it  awakens;  and  it  is  also  the  minister  of 
truth.  What  Augustine  and  the  Puritans  failed 
to  see  was  that  the  soul  of  man  requires  nurture  no 
less  than  discipline;  that  the  humanizing  influence 
of  beauty  may  soften  the  heart  and  prepare  the 
soil  for  the  good  seed  of  spiritual  truth  which  else 
had  fallen  on  stony  ground.  They  forgot  the 
Hebrew  teaching  that  Jehovah  is  to  be  worshiped 
in  the  holiness  of  beauty  no  less  than  in  the  beauty 
of  holiness.  A  sound  spiritual  instinct  lay  behind 
the  development  of  Gothic  architecture  and  made 
the  leaders  of  the  church  the  chief  patrons  of  the 
art  of  Raphael  and  Michelangelo. 

Plato  and  Tolstoy  overlooked  the  function  of 
beauty  as  the  witness  of  truth.  Art  is  not,  as 
Plato  imagined,  the  imitator  of  nature,  the  mere 
copy  of  a  copy.  Art  is  truer  than  nature.  It 
depicts  the  deeper  reality  after  which  nature 
strives.  It  is  the  minister  of  spiritual  liberty, 
setting  men  free  from  the  limitations  of  the  actual, 
and  suggesting  the  ideal  which,  nowhere,  lies  yet 
everywhere  in  the  w^orld.  It  bears  with  it  inti- 
mations of  a  wholeness  and  perfection  infinitely 
removed  from  the  fragmentariness  of  our  little 
experience.  The  perception  of  beauty  opens  the 
mind  to  suggestions  which  the  dull  reason  has 
failed  to  heed.  Even  if  the  cultivation  of  the 
artistic  spirit  removes  for  a  time  the  artist  from 
the  comradeship  of  his  duller  and  less  fortunate 

68 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

brethren,  that  need  not  be  to  their  loss,  if  it  take 
him  up  into  the  mountain  to  behold 

.  .  .  the  very  God,  the  Highest, 
Stand  upon  the  paved  work  of  a  sapphire. 
Like  the  bodied  heaven  for  clearness. 

Let  him  but  come  down  from  the  mountain  with 
the  tables  of  truth  in  his  hands;  let  him  but  store 
up — for  future  ages  if  need  be — revelations  of  the 
ideal  which  his  own  time  could  not  bear,  and  the 
pittance  of  food  and  shelter  which  is  his  meed  is 
well  bestowed  at  men's  hands. 

The  artist  is  the  minister  of  beauty.  He  it  is 
who  teaches  us  how  to  find  it,  who  fashions  it 
before  our  eyes,  who  awakens  in  our  hearts, 

Those  first  affections. 

Those  shadowy  recollections. 
Which,  be  they  what  they  may, 
Are  yet  the  fountain-light  of  all  our  day, 
Are  yet  a  master-light  of  all  our  seeing. 

Therefore  our  first  duty  to  the  artist  is  to  await 
his  pleasure,  to  borrow  his  ear  and  his  eye,  to  let 
the  light  break  in  upon  our  souls  from  the  vision 
which  first  enraptured  him.  It  is  his  province  to 
be,  first  of  all,  the  seer,  and  after  to  make  us  see. 
Our  hearts  must  vibrate  to  the  thrill  which  quick- 
ened his  pulses.  To  stop  at  this  point  to  ask  him 
what  he  meant,  what  lesson  he  had  to  teach,  is  an 
impertinence.  Let  us  get  the  vision  first,  and 
then  at  our  leisure  we  may  discover  what  it  means 
for  us. 

59 


COM  KSSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

This  is  not  to  be  lucking  moral  earnestness.  It 
is  first  of  all,  because  when  we  have  done  this  we 
shall  discover  life  itself  to  be  bigger  and  more  worth 
while  tliiin  we  had  thought,  and  the  moral  problem 
will  gain  new  light  from  the  larger  perspective; 
and,  second,  because  we  ourselves  will  be  enlarged 
and  better  fitted  for  our  moral  task. 

Thus  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  artist  is,  as 
Arnold  said  of  Emerson,  the  "friend  and  aider  of 
him  who  would  live  in  the  spirit."  That  not  every 
one  among  artists  has  known  what  the  spirit  in 
him  did  signify  is  nothing  to  the  point.  Even  the 
prophets  were  in  no  better  case.  The  temptation 
to  rest  in  sheer  enjoyment  of  beauty,  to  luxuriate 
in  mere  sensuous  pleasure  born  of  finer  nerves  and 
a  more  sensitive  organization  than  one's  fellows, 
has  been  the  snare  of  the  artist.  It  differs  little, 
however,  from  the  impulse  which  sent  the  most 
earnest  spirits  of  the  Middle  Ages  into  the  mon- 
asteries, that  they  might  enjoy  the  vision  of  God 
undistracted  by  the  sights  and  sounds,  the  needs 
and  burdens  of  the  workaday  world.  If  we  have 
learned  a  more  excellent  way  of  spiritual  attain- 
ment through  the  daily  service  of  our  fellow  men, 
let  us  also  see  the  true  place  of  art  and  beauty  in 
the  daily  life,  and  obey  the  spirit  of  the  Chinese 
proverb  which  says,  "If  you  have  two  loaves  of 
bread,  sell  one  and  buy  lilies." 

Consciousness  of  the  besetting  sin  of  art,  and  no 
less  of  their  own  genuine  moral  purpose;  conscious- 
ness as  well  of  the  attitude  of  the  practical  world 

60 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

toward  art,  has  bred  in  many  of  the  greatest 
artists  a  distrust  of  their  calling.  Plato  was  not 
the  last  to  pride  himself  on  being  a  philosopher 
and  to  seek  to  transcend  his  art.  Wordsworth, 
as  we  have  seen,  and  Browning  himself,  Tolstoy 
and  Ruskin  and  William  Morris,  and  a  host  of 
others  have  sought  to  prove  their  seriousness  of 
temper  by  being  reformers  and  metaphysicians. 
And  the  world  has  forgotten  their  philosophizings 
and  their  social  programs  to  treasure  the  mani- 
festations of  their  artistic  power,  the  embodiment 
of  their  intuitions  of  life's  beauty  and  significance. 
This,  then,  is  the  lesson  which  I  have  learned 
first  of  all  from  the  metaphysical  poet,  the  high 
priest  of  the  Brahmans,  the  master  of  subtleties 
who  sought  to  embody  German  transcendentalism 
in  incomprehensible  English  verse.  Subtle  he  is, 
and  fond  of  dissertation,  but  at  such  times  he  is 
by  so  much  less  an  artist.  If  this  were  all,  the 
critics  would  be  right.  But  when  his  mind  runs 
riot  in  chaotic  profusion  of  metaphor,  for  sheer  joy 
in  beauty;  when  he  flames  up  in  a  very  passion  of 
delight  over  the  loveliness  of  human  love  and 
truth ;  when  he  reveals  the  emotion  of  the  creative 
artist,  not  in  himself  alone  but  by  intuition  in  the 
heart  of  the  painter  or  the  musician,  of  Andrea  and 
Lippo  and  Abt  Vogler;  when  the  glimpses  of  God 
in  the  world  thrill  him  to  his  soul's  depths  with  the 
sense  of  power  and  majestj'^  and  infinite  love,  then  I 
have  learned  to  surrender  myself  to  his  feeling 
until  I  too  have  caught  some  glimpse  of  the  heart 

61 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

of  fire  which  hums  in  truth  and  saving  passion 
through  the  whole  fabrie  of  Creation.  Then  I 
feel  that  I  have  heard  something  of  his  message  to 
his  fellow  men. 

n 

When  one  has  thus  surrendered  himself  to  the 
will  of  an  artist,  asking  only  that  he  may  see  what 
his  master  has  seen,  the  first  thing  he  learns  is 
the  worth  and  significance  of  the  subject-matter. 
The  Greek  sculptors  revealed  the  beauty  of  the 
human  form.  Raphael  and  the  line  of  Italian 
artists  who  preceded  him  from  Cimabue  to  Botti- 
celli carried  the  sweetness  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
birth  of  God  into  the  heart  of  the  world,  and 
incidentally  gave  new  significance  to  motherhood 
and  babyhood.  Rembrandt  made  men  see  the 
dignity  of  conmion  humanity  by  painting  Christ 
and  the  apostles  in  the  humble  garb  and  mien  of 
Dutch  peasants.  Millet  opened  the  eyes  of  the 
nineteenth  century  to  the  beauty  of  common 
things  and  the  worth  of  common  folk.  So  in 
poetry,  to  take  a  single  example,  Wordsworth  was 
enamored  of  nature.  The  sounding  cataract 
haunted  him  like  a  passion.  The  meanest  flower 
that  blows  had  power  to  awaken  in  his  soul 
"thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears." 
As  a  result,  he  taught  the  world  to  find  a  signifi- 
cance in  the  beauties  of  nature  which  became  a 
very  revelation  of  God. 

Browning's  subject-matter,  as  we  have  seen,  is 
62 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

human  life  in  the  endless  variety  of  its  individual 
manifestations.  In  sheer  intoxication  with  the 
manifold  significance  of  human  nature  lie  crowded 
his  verse  to  repletion  with  studies  of  the  souls  of 
men,  finding  something  worthy  of  remark  in  the 
meanest  and  most  sordid,  and  never  weary  of 
depicting  the  glory  of  human  love  and  the  beauty 
of  the  soul  in  action.  As  Angelo  exhausted  the 
possibilities  of  the  human  figure  on  the  ceiling  and 
reredos  of  the  Sistine  Chapel,  so  Browning  has 
painted  the  soul  in  well-nigh  every  conceivable 
attitude  of  hope  and  fear,  of  joy  and  sorrow,  of 
hate  and  love.  The  result  is  that  when  we  have 
surrendered  ourselves  to  his  guidance  and  have 
allowed  him  to  show  us  life  as  he  saw  it  and  loved 
it,  in  its  immense  complexity,  its  never-ending 
variety,  its  beauty  of  form  and  feature,  its  sur- 
prises of  baseness  and  virtue,  we  find  ourselves 
saturated  with  it  and  colored  by  it  to  a  degree  we 
had  not  supposed  possible. 

To  have  learned  to  look  at  the  world  with  an 
artist's  eyes;  to  become  willing  to  enjoy  beauty  in 
painting  or  music  or  poetry  as  well  as  in  nature 
herself  simply  for  its  own  sake  and  for  the  exquisite 
pleasure  it  yields,  no  less  than  for  the  suggestion  of 
spiritual  significance  which  the  perception  of 
beauty  inevitably  affords — this  is  no  small  gain  to 
any  soul.  But  if  one  can  go  on  and  learn  to  take 
human  life  at  its  face  value,  to  find  joy  in  its 
manifold  interest,  holding  the  moral  judgment  in 

63 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

suspense  until  one  has,  first  of  all,  let  himself  go 
with  his  fellows  in  all  their  thoughtless  and  im- 
pulsive aolivities  and  has  assured  himself  that  he 
understands  what  they  mean  and  purpose  and 
how  they  think  about  themselves;  if  one  can  even 
restrain  his  sympathies  until  he  has  entered  so 
deeply  into  the  life  of  men  that  he  is  capable  of 
something  more  than  mere  sentimental  vaporings 
about  brotherhood,  and  has  been  empowered  to 
put  his  own  life  into  theirs  in  a  genuine  incarnation 
of  love  and  service;  then,  I  maintain,  one  has 
learned  the  deepest  lesson  life  has  to  give. 

This  is  a  matter  of  pecuhar  importance  for  the 
man  who  would  be  a  spiritual  teacher.  It  is  not 
possible  to  uplift  men  by  reaching  down  to  them 
from  above.  One  must  be  a  part  of  the  life  he 
would  raise  to  the  heights:  this  is  the  meaning  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  the  incarnation.  The 
temptation  of  the  moralist  is  to  become  a  crusader 
and  an  iconoclast,  cramming  his  ideals  down  the 
throats  of  his  victims  whether  thej'  will  or  no.  The 
baptism  of  Hollo  and  his  Northmen  by  wholesale 
and  the  attempt  to  convert  the  paynims  by  the  edge 
of  the  sword,  belong  in  the  same  category  with  the 
Puritan  Blue  Laws  and  the  attitude  of  ministers 
to  the  moving-picture  show.  The  moral  interest 
is  the  deepest  thing  in  life,  but  it  is  not  the  whole 
of  life  any  more  than  the  foundation  is  the  whole 
of  the  house.  This  is  the  great  gulf  fixed  between 
the  artist  and  the  reformer.  If  the  artist  has 
sinned  through  the  dilettante  spirit,  through  the 

64 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

failure  to  take  life  seriously,  the  reformer  has  been 
no  less  sadly  mistaken  in  not  recognizing  the 
wholesome  character  of  normal  human  interests 
and  in  not  waiting  until  he  understood  his  neigh- 
bor before  proceeding  to  the  work  of  uplift.  The 
kingdom  of  heaven  has  always  suffered  violence 
from  those  who  would  take  it  by  force,  and  to 
whom  One  who  played  with  children  and  was  a 
welcome  guest  at  wedding  and  feast  must  be  a 
glutton  and  a  winebibber,  the  friend  of  publicans 
and  sinners. 

Those  who  regard  Browning  as  primarily  a 
philosopher  have  always  stumbled  more  or  less  at 
his  universal  interest  in  humanity.  Why  he  should 
include  in  his  gallery  of  men  and  women  so  wide  a 
variety  of  types  bad  and  good:  Blougram  and 
Sludge  and  Johannes  Agricola,  Porphyria's  Lover 
and  Ned  Bratts  and  Ivan  Ivanovitch,  Caliban  and 
Count  Guido,  the  miser-girl  of  Pornic  and  the 
husband  in  "Fifine" — side  by  side  with  Capon- 
sacchi  and  Pompilia  and  the  Pope,  with  Gismond 
and  Cleon  and  Saint  John,  and  Karshish  and  Ben 
Ezra  and  Abt  Vogler  and  the  rest,  has  taxed  the 
ingenuity  of  commentators  from  Mrs.  Orr  and 
Nettleship  to  Professor  Corson.  The  simple  fact 
is  that  all  these  human  beings  were  interesting; 
and  if  we  study  them  and  what  happened  to  them, 
we  may  gain  some  knowledge  of  the  heart  of  man 
and  some  larger  sympathy  with  our  kind. 

To  do  this,  however,  we  must  give  the  rein  to 
our   interest.     We   must   be   capable   of   artistic 

65 


(ONFFSSIONS  OF  A  RHOWNING  LOVER 

sympalliy.  Tlioro  is  ii  K-gend  that  one  day 
Jesus  and  his  disciples  wciv  in  llio  way,  wlion  they 
came  upon  llie  dead  body  of  a  dog  by  the  road- 
side. One  by  one  the  disciples  gave  expression  to 
their  disgust.  At  length  their  Master  said,  "But 
behold,  how  white  its  teeth!"  We  must  be  able 
to  find  some  i)oint  of  contact  even  with  a  dead  dog 
if  we  are  to  get  anything  out  of  life  or  learn  any- 
thing from  it. 

This  is  what  is  popularly  known  as  Browning's 
"Optimism."  The  word  may  stand  for  want  of  a 
better,  though  it  smacks  of  a  certain  cheap-and- 
ready  cockiness  very  far  removed  from  the  poet's 
robust  and  manly  acceptance  of  life.  Its  roots 
lie  deep  in  certain  profound  convictions  of  which 
we  shall  presently  speak.  But  its  primary  mani- 
festation is  to  be  found  in  this  universal  human 
interest,  this  frank  enjoyment  of  life,  so  closely 
akin  to  the  artist's  enjoyment  of  beauty.  It  is 
equally  repudiated  by  the  Puritan,  to  whom  this 
world  is  a  vale  of  tears,  the  prison-house  of  the 
soul  whence  it  seeks  escape. 

The  truth  is  that  men  are  interesting  because 
there  is  some  soul  of  goodness,  something  worth 
while  in  them  all.  It  is  because  there  are  in  all 
men  traces  of  spiritual  dignity,  the  germs  of 
spiritual  development;  and  because,  when  one 
undertakes  to  depict  life  as  he  sees  it,  one  finds 
these  spiritual  indications  falling  into  place  as  the 
most  central  and  essential  characteristics  of  man- 

66 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

kind,  that  the  poet  is  able  to  clothe  even  the  most 
sordid  with  some  measure  of  dignity.  They  can- 
not avoid  bearing  witness  to  the  truth  even  when, 
as  in  the  case  of  Guido  or  the  monk  of  the  "Spanish 
Cloister,"  it  is  by  the  measure  of  their  instinctive 
hostility.  Ferishtah,  while  he  refuses  to  dogma- 
tize, bears  this  record,  that 

"Of  absolute  and  irretrievable 
And  all-subduing  black — black's  soul  of  black 
Beyond  white's  power  to  disintensify — 
Of  that  I  saw  no  sample." 

The  Pope  declares  that  outside  day, 

"In  the  absolutest  drench  of  dark 
Ne'er  wants  a  witness,  some  stray  beauty-beam 
To  the  despair  of  hell." 

Paracelsus  finds  "E'en  hate  is  but  a  mask  of 
love's,"  a  dark  saying  which  the  poet  elucidates 
when  he  describes  Dante  as  one  who 

loved  well  because  he  hated, 
Hated  wickedness  that  hinders  loving. 

The  Bishop  of  St.  Praxed's  is  at  least  capable,  not 

only  of  the  love  of  art  and  of  good  Latin,  but  of 

human  love — the  highest  thing  this  world  knows 

save   only    the   love   of   the   Divine.     Blougram 

responds  to 

a  sunset  touch, 
A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus-ending  from  Euripides. 

The  heartless  Duke  of  Ferrara  is  a  lover  of  artistic 
beauty — which  does  not  mean  that  the  artistic 

67 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  I.OVER 

instinct  is  witlunit  moral  power  or  spirit nal  worth, 
hnt,  rather,  that  llicro  is  this  nincli  good  in  him  at 
any  rate.  Even  Guido,  under  the  spell  of  extreme 
terror  at  the  approach  of  I  he  death  watch,  bears 
witness  to  the  power  of  the  goodness  he  has  so 
long  denied  and  scorned,  when  he  appeals  to 

"Christ,  Maria,  God— Pompilia! 
Will  you  let  them  murder  me?" 

Ill 

All  this  is  only  to  say  that  just  as  beauty  bears 
witness  to  spiritual  principles,  to  the  reality  and 
meaning  of  the  Ideal,  so  the  interest  with  which 
humanity  is  invested  testifies  to  the  ultimate 
worth  of  life.  The  artist,  whether  he  knows  it  or 
not,  is  the  minister  of  truth,  bringing  us  into 
contact  with  realities  to  which  the  sluggish  reason 
is  blind,  and  is  the  revealer  of  God. 

When  we  have  surrendered  to  the  spell  of  the 
artist  and  have  seen  his  vision,  then  we  are  in  duty 
bound  to  go  on  to  inquire  what  it  signifies.  Merely 
to  give  ourselves  up  to  enjoyment,  without  rising 
to  self-consciousness  and  laying  hold  on  the 
treasures  of  wisdom  which  the  artist  has  brought, 
is  to  fall  under  the  condemnation  of  the  dilettante 
spirit  which  we  have  reprobated  in  the  artist 
himself. 

I  make  haste  to  insist  that  the  true  artist  is,  in 
the  very  nature  of  things,  the  best  philosopher, 
whose   exterior   semblance   doth   belie   his   soul's 

68 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

immensity.  The  recognition  of  the  spiritual  value 
of  beauty,  of  the  essential  worth  and  dignity  of 
life  in  itself,  is  the  one  thing  that  can  justify  art  in 
a  busy  and  serious  world,  and  itself  constitutes  a 
philosophy  of  life. 

Moreover,  it  rests  on  many  other  considerations, 
explicit  and  implicit,  some  of  which  I  have  already 
pointed  out,  and  others  will  become  manifest 
when  I  come  to  speak  of  Browning's  own  way  of 
looking  at  things. 

But  one  thing  more  remains  to  be  said  before 
we  turn  from  this  consideration  of  the  artistic 
method  and  point  of  view.  That  is  that  by  virtue 
of  its  intimate  relation  to  life,  art  may  become  a 
direct  means  of  inculcating  truth.  This  is  debat- 
able ground,  as  we  all  know.  A  didactic  purpose\ 
in  art  is  like  salt  in  food  or  garlic  in  salad — too  ] 
much  is  disastrous.  But  we  cannot  forbid  the 
artist  to  regard  himself  and  his  work  seriously. 
If  he  understands  himself  and  his  art,  if  he  has 
thought  out  its  essential  principles  and  is  con- 
scious of  its  spiritual  implications,  it  is  not  likely 
that  he  will  be  any  the  less  enamored  of  beauty 
or  eager  to  reveal  it.  The  greater  the  artist,  the 
deeper  his  insight  into  life  and  its  relations,  the 
more  skillful  in  bringing  out  its  essential  lines  and 
awakening  in  us  the  recognition  of  its  true  pro- 
portion and  values,  the  wider  is  the  range  of 
lessons  he  may  consciously  teach  us. 

The  distinction  between  art  that  has  a  conscious 
serious  purpose  and  is  thereby  rendered  the  loftier 

69 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

and  more  enduring,  and  art  that  has  been  over- 
lojulod  witli  didactic  intentions  and  become 
coninu)nplaco  and  out  of  proportion,  seems  to 
rest  on  the  distinction  between  essential  truth  and 
its  statement  in  i)arlicular  or  dogmatic  form.  A 
cathedral  may  illustrate  in  its  ornamentation  the 
creed  of  its  founders.  A  Jewish  synagogue  would 
not  employ  trefoil  decoration,  nor  an  English  parish 
church  cut  the  railing  around  the  altar  in  the  form 
of  quotations  from  the  Koran.  But  the  trefoil 
may  illustrate  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  it  can- 
not teach  it.  That  a  Gothic  cathedral  may  be 
more  impressive  than  a  Moorish  mosque  does  not 
prove  the  superior  truth  of  Christianity,  k  What 
the  beauty  of  both  may  do  is  to  bear  witness 
to  the  spiritual  aspirations  of  humanity,  and 
so  impress  the  beholder  as  to  awaken  the  con- 
viction that  those  aspirations  must  be  well 
founded. 

So  "The  Angelus"  is  fraught  with  spiritual 
meaning.  True,  there  is  beauty  in  its  simple 
drawing  and  in  the  exquisite  sunset  light  which 
touches  every  clod  and  blade  of  grass.  But  one 
has  not  seen  "The  Angelus"  if  he  has  not  caught 
the  feeling  of  the  hour,  and  the  sense  of  the 
dignity  of  common  humanity  which  at  the  call 
of  the  bell  from  the  distant  tower  has  been  rapt 
from  its  humble  and  drudging  toil  into  the  im- 
mediate presence  of  the  Infinite.  So  essentially 
the  meaning  of  the  picture  does  this  seem  that 
one  cannot    avoid    the    conviction    that    this    is 

70 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

what  the  artist  had  in  mind,  what  he  purposed 
to  teach. 

One  is  aware  of  a  distinction  here.     The  purely 
artistic  attitude  would  be  that  which,  though  it 
might  not  share  the  faith  of  the  peasant,  never- 
theless recognized  its  beauty  and  sought  to  depict 
simply  that;   to  make  us  feel  that  these  humble 
toilers  thought  that  their  prayer  brought  them  into 
the  presence  of  God,  and  so  lifted  them  above 
their  drudgery.     To  share  their  faith  and  paint 
the  picture  in  the  interest  of  awakening  the  same 
conviction  in  the  beholder  would  be  quite  another 
matter.     But  the  point  I  am  making  is  that  to  see 
the  beauty  of  such  a  faith  and  be  able  to  make 
others  see  it  is  to  share  it.     Such  sharing  may  be 
a    temporary    and    purely   artistic  sympathy,  as 
Booth  was  Hamlet  during  three  hours.     None  the 
less  the  possibility  of  such  identification  of  oneself 
with  another  bears  witness  to  the  essential  truth 
of  the  other's  life.     Booth  could  not  have  trans- 
formed himself  into  Hamlet  if  Hamlet  did  not 
embody    a    genuine    human    experience.     Millet 
could  not  have  shared  the  faith  of  a  peasant  even 
by  artistic  sympathy  were  not  such  faith  a  vital 
power  in  the  lives  of  those  whom   he  painted. 
They  were  lifted  above  their  humble  lot  by  their 
prayer.     That  is  what  the  artist  saw  and  what  he 
felt  to  be  beautiful  enough  to  be  worth  making 
us   see.     And   that   means   a   conviction   of   the 
essential  truth  of  the  peasants'  faith. 

But  not  of  its  'particular  form.     This  is  what  I  am 
71 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  RROWNING  LOVER 

trying  to  show.  Nothing  in  "The  Angchis"  can 
])rovo  tliat  the  Cathohc  dogma  is  truer  than  the 
Protestant  faith,  ll  can  prove  that  prayer 
dignifies  and  ennobles  hfe,  and  that  the  humblest 
peasant,  with  neither  learning  nor  privilege,  can 
siiare  its  benefits  as  readily  as  the  wisest  priest. 
The  interest  in  the  artist  may  have  been  in  the 
dignifying  of  humble  life  rather  than  in  the  spirit- 
ual side  of  his  truth,  but  the  fact  remains  that  he 
felt  the  impress  of  truth  and  employed  his  art  to 
declare  it. 

Thus  art  becomes,  in  a  still  more  direct  and 
intimate  way,  the  minister  of  truth.  It  cannot 
establish  any  particular  set  of  dogmas,  but  it  can 
so  illustrate  spiritual  principles  as  to  enable  them 
to  be  grasped  by  those  who  would  have  difficulty 
in  defining  them.  It  remains  an  abiding  char- 
acteristic of  the  human  mind,  as  Tennyson  de- 
clared, that  in  the  deepest  matters 

Truth  in  closest  words  shall  fail, 
When  truth  embodied  in  a  tale 
Shall  enter  in  at  lowly  doors. 

We  are  all  children  when  it  comes  to  the  greatest 
things,  and  can  be  instructed  by  object  lessons 
when  the  solemn  inculcation  of  principles  glides 
smoothly  over  our  heads. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  art  renders  its  second 
great  service  to  humanity;  and  it  is  here  that 
poetry,  by  reason  of  its  greater  intellectual  interest, 
is  supreme.  This  is  what  Mrs.  Browning  meant 
when  she  called  the  poets 

72 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

The  only  truth-tellers  now  left  to  God, 
The  only  speakers  of  essential  truth. 
Opposed  to  relative,  comparative, 
And  temporal  truths;  the  only  holders  by 
His  sun-skirts  through  conventional  gray  glooms; 
The  only  teachers  who  instruct  mankind 
From  just  a  shadow  on  a  charnel-wall 
To  find  man's  veritable  stature  out. 
Erect,  sublime — the  measure  of  a  man. 
And  that's  the  measure  of  an  angel,  says 
The  apostle. 

That  Browning  regarded  his  art  in  this  serious 
fashion  goes  without  saying.  He  was  morally  and 
intellectually  incapable  of  anything  less  than  this. 
I  have  insisted  that  he  was,  first  of  all,  an  artist 
because  I  believe  that  he  chose  that  method  of 
declaring  the  truth  that  was  shut  up  like  fire  in  his 
bones,  and  that  by  his  art  he  would  be  judged; 
because  I  believe  that  when  his  readers  have 
regarded  him  as  a  philosopher  they  failed  to  find 
that  point  of  sight  without  which  any  picture 
becomes  distorted  and  out  of  drawing.  Looking 
for  logic,  they  are  disheartened  and  discouraged 
when  they  find  only  direct  intuitive  insight,  and 
cry  out  that  he  is  obscure.  Looking  everywhere 
for  doctrine,  they  are  perplexed  when  they  fre- 
quently discover  nothing  but  human  interest  and 
artistic  skill.  Lacking  the  true  touchstone,  they 
painfully  "gather  dust  and  chaff"  and  miss  the 
true  grain;  they  cart  home  loads  of  gravel  and 
sand  and  pass  by  the  gold. 

Whether  the  poet  first  formulated  a  philosophy 
of  life  and  then  constructed  his  poems  and  invented 

73 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Iiis  c'harattors  lo  inculcate  it,  or  whether  his 
artistic  instinct  led  him  to  find  pleasure  in  these 
stories  and  in  telling  them  he  was  led  to  make 
them  the  groundwork  of  his  philosophy,  is  an  in- 
teresting psychological  inquiry,  but  it  throws  little 
light  on  his  work.  In  any  case,  he  undertakes  to 
impress  us  with  the  truth  through  liis  art.  Where 
that  falls  short  no  amount  of  argumentation  can 
convince  us  of  his  doctrine.  Wherein  his  poetry 
is  true  to  life,  where  his  men  and  women  are 
vitally  and  eagerly  alive,  the  truth  upon  which 
their  lives  and  experiences  rest  makes  its  own  way 
into  our  hearts. 

After  all  (it  is  an  old  thought),  literature  is  only 
life.  Throbbing,  eager,  complex  life  in  the  world 
outside,  passing  through  the  prism  of  the  poet's 
intense,  rich,  multiform  personality,  is  spread 
out  for  us  in  petto,  to  be  enjoyed  and  inter- 
preted only  by  the  life  within  ourselves,  earnest 
and  loving  and  openhearted.  Logic  makes  as 
sad  work  of  poetry  as  botany  of  a  rose. 

Our  meddling  intellect 
Misshapes  the  beauteous  forms  of  things, 
We  murder  to  dissect. 

But  if,  firm  in  our  faith  that  man  and  nature 
and  life  are  not  without  significance,  and  that  the 
primal  human  instincts  may  be  provisionally 
trusted,  we  are  looking  abroad  in  the  world  for 
beauty  which  shall  thrill  us  with  consciousness  of 
the  ideal,  for  truth  which  shall  give  firm  standing 

<4; 


OF  ARTISTS  AND  PHILOSOPHERS 

ground  for  our  feet  amid  the  shock  of  circumstance 
and  the  rush  and  whirl  of  change,  for  love  which 
shall  bind  us  to  our  fellows  in  the  deep  brother- 
hood of  common  sorrows,  of  common  joys  and  a 
common  spirit  of  service;  if  we  lend  a  willing  ear  to 
every  voice  which  rings  true,  whether  its  speech 
be  of  things  in  heaven  or  things  on  the  earth;  if 
we  are  in  search,  not  of  arguments  to  bolster  up 
our  dogmas  but  of  truth  to  feed  our  souls,  then 
may  we  venture  without  fear  to  open  mind  and 
heart  to  those  who  have  been  called  of  God 
to  See  and  Make-See,  the  master-artists  of  all 
ages  and  all  climes  and  all  fields,  nor  doubt  that 
our  life  shall  be  enriched  and  made  glad  with  the 
vision  of  unutterable  things. 

And  when  in  that  spirit  we  take  up  the  poetry  of 
Browning,  we  shall  find  him  not  the  least  of  those 
who  were  called  to  be  prophets  of  truth  to  this 
new,  chaotic  age  in  which  we  live;  which  has  need 
to  be  taught  that  life  is  worth  while,  despite  its 
origin;  that  truth  is  not  an  idle  word,  though  its 
meaning  has  often  been  mistaken;  and  that  right 
is  not  a  barren  survival  of  tribal  custom,  but  a 
corner  stone  on  which  the  universe  must  rest. 


75 


CHAPTER  III 
OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

The  elder  Von  Moltke  was  said  to  be  able  to 
keep  silent  in  seven  languages.  That  certainly 
is  a  remarkable  achievement,  but  it  never  cap- 
tured my  imagination  like  that  other  of  whom  I 
have  read  who  could  speak  six  languages  fluently 
and  hadn't  an  idea  in  any  of  them.  Richard  Le 
Gallienne  has  recently  expressed  his  opinion  that 
the  literary  world  of  to-day  is  in  the  latter  case. 
He  declares  that  never  since  men  began  to  clothe 
their  ideas  in  literary  form  have  there  been  so 
many  who  have  mastered  the  art  of  expression, 
who  are  able  to  write  so  cleverly,  so  gracefully, 
with  such  mastery  of  the  mechanics  of  their  art — 
and  never  have  they  had  so  little  to  say! 

To  be  sure,  even  critics — especially  when  they 
pass  forty — are  likely  to  become  mere  landafores 
temporis  acti.  I  have  recalled  Mr.  Le  Gallienne's 
verdict  not  for  the  sake  of  expressing  either 
agreement  or  disagreement;  but  because  it  sug- 
gests by  way  of  contrast  Browning's  "vexed 
beating  stuffed  and  stopped  up  brain,"  charged 
to  the  brim  with  convictions  and  ideals  which  he 
was  straitened  to  deliver,  forever  wrestling  with 
forms  of  language  too  clumsy  and  intractable  to 
yield   them   utterance.     One  is  reminded  of  the 

76 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

way  in  which  Saint  Paul  tortured  the  jflexible 
Greek  to  make  it  convey  what  eye  hath  not  seen 
nor  ear  heard;  how  he  piles  Pelion  on  Ossa,  adverb 
on  adjective,  inventing  new  forms  of  super- 
superlative  to  express  the  inexpressible.  In  like 
manner  Browning  struggles  with  our  sturdy  and 
forthright  mother  tongue  to  make  it  the  vehicle 
— not  so  much  of  subtleties  of  thought  as  of  feelings 
too  delicate,  of  emotions  too  warm,  of  enthusiasms 
too  eager  for  our  "matter-molded"  forms  of 
speech. 


To  the  end  of  his  life  the  art  of  saying  directly 
and  simply  what  one  had  to  say  remained  a  mys- 
tery to  Robert  Browning.  He  could  not  write 
a  telegram  without  having  to  send  a  letter  after 
it  to  explain  what  the  message  was  about.  Even 
Miss  Barrett  has  to  ask  him  to  elucidate  the 
"Sordelloisms"  in  his  letters.  When  he  under- 
takes, in  "One  Word  More,"  to  put  his  whole  soul 
in  a  sentence;  when,  to  use  his  own  figure,  he 
would  "steal  a  hair-brush,  curb  the  liberal  hand, 
subservient  proudly,  fill  his  lady's  missal-marge 
with  flowerets,"  the  fruit  of  speech  is  so  near  to 
commonplace  that  his  heart  despairs,  and  he 
cries,  "Poor  the  speech!  be  how  I  speak  for  all 
things!" 

The  source  of  this  congenital  disability  is  two- 
fold. To  begin  with,  whenever  the  poet  under- 
took to  speak  directly  and  simply  he  found  himself 

77 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

iiivolvcil  in  all  the  immense  complexity  and  miin- 
ifoKlness  of  even  the  simplest  fact.  It  is  said  that 
one  of  his  eyes  was  extremely  farsighted,  so  that 
he  could  read  the  time  on  a  distant  tower  clock 
without  a  glass,  but  the  other  was  equally  near- 
sighted. The  result  seems  to  have  been  to  give 
him  both  telescopic  and  microscopic  powers,  so 
that  the  simplest  things  appeared  to  him  both  as 
the  center  of  vast  forces  and  influences  extending 
to  the  bounds  of  space,  and  equally  as  a  micro- 
cosm of  the  intricate  interweaving  of  the  infinitely 
little.  He  was  so  made  that  he  never  saw  pure 
white  hght  as  simply  light,  but  as  compounded 
of  all  the  hues  of  a  thousand  rainbows.  So 
modest  and  simple-hearted  was  he  withal  that  it 
never  occurred  to  him  that  every  one  else  did  not 
see  it  in  the  same  radiant  and  glorious  fashion. 
Add  to  this  an  altogether  naive  passion  for  telling 
the  exact  truth,  so  that  he  would  not  call  on  his 
wife  during  the  brief  interval  between  their  mar- 
riage and  their  final  departure  for  the  Continent 
simply  because  he  would  have  to  ask  for  Miss 
Barrett,  whereas  she  was  now  Mrs.  Browning,  and 
you  have  one  clue  to  his  "obscurity." 

The  other  is  to  be  found  in  the  intensity  and 
impetuosity  of  spirit  that  was  hidden  behind  his 
altogether  mild  and  commonplace  exterior.  He 
was  forever  taking  a  running  jump  into  the  middle 
of  things  and  then  finding  himself  under  the  pain- 
ful necessity  of  bringing  up  the  arrears  before  he 
could  go  on  to  the  end.     His  first  letter  to  E.  B.  B., 

78 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

written  while  as  yet  they  were  total  strangers 
except  through  their  poetry,  begins,  "I  love  you, 
dear  Miss  Barrett."  It  took  him  a  full  year  to 
bring  their  intercourse  up  to  that  point  again, 
though  he  nearly  put  the  fat  in  the  fire  by  another 
outburst  after  his  first  call — and  had  to  lie  like  a 
gentleman  (and  very  awkwardly  withal)  to  square 
himself;  which  lie,  after  the  fashion  of  lies,  came 
back  to  torment  him  months  afterward.  He  be- 
gins "Sordello"  at  the  end  and  then  has  to  employ 
four  cantos  to  bring  the  reader  up  with  him — with 
indifferent  success,  as  Tennyson  declared.  He 
tells  the  story  of  "The  Ring  and  The  Book"  three 
times  in  the  first  canto  despite  his  purpose  to  tell 
it  a  dozen  times  more  through  different  mouths. 

I  have  often  wondered  what  that  white  hot, 
volcanic  consciousness  of  his  must  have  been 
like,  so  surcharged  with  sentiment  and  passion, 
forever  beating  in  vain  against  the  prison  bars  of 
expression.  He  starts  to  say  something,  and 
before  a  dozen  words  have  escaped  him  another 
and  better  way  of  putting  it  stumbles  over  the 
heels  of  the  first.  He  begins  a  metaphor,  and 
interrupts  it  with  a  simile,  and  that  suggests  an 
allegory,  and  a  dozen  colorful  adjectives  and 
adverbs  insist  on  being  heard,  until  before  he  gets 
to  the  end  of  his  sentence  he  has  shuffled  and 
discarded  enough  material  for  a  poem,  besides 
letting  two  or  three  times  as  much  as  he  needed 
escape  simply  because  it  was  physically  impos- 
sible to  crowd  them  back  into  their  cage. 

79 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

111  these  characteristics  of  the  man  you  have  the 
secret  of  his  involved  and  cumbrous  sentences, 
his  wrecked  and  dislocated  grammar,  his  apparent 
subtleties  of  thought,  his  utter  inability  to  speak 
his  heart  out  clearly  and  simply.  Of  course  it 
is  a  fault  in  his  art,  but  what  a  glorious  fault  it  is! 
One  would  not  exchange  it  for  all  the  limpid 
clearness  and  delicate  melody  in  the  world.  Of 
course  one  is  glad  there  are  such  poets  as  Keats, 
such  painstaking  craftsmen  as  Tennyson;  but 
when  the  currents  of  life  become  clogged  and 
sluggish  and  one  longs  for  the  tonic  electric 
sliock  of  a  supercharged  vitality,  there  is  no  one 
like  Browning.  When  the  blood  grows  thin  and 
pale  in  the  high  altitudes  of  speculation;  when 
life  seems  shallow  and  scanty  of  meaning;  then  a 
half-hour's  brisk  gallop  on  his  eager  Pegasus  sets 
the  pulses  bounding  and  puts  color  in  the  cheek, 
and  one  returns  with  zest  to  the  task  of  living. 

xVnd  this  is  the  man  who  looked  like  a  French 
banker;  who  was  such  an  indefatigable  diner-out; 
whom  Benson  describes  lunching  with  the  college 
boys  at  Cambridge,  jingling  the  coins  in  his 
pocket  and  putting  the  lads  at  their  ease  with 
small  talk,  in  every  way  the  prosperous  man  of 
the  world  and  not  at  all  like  a  poet. 

In  a  way  I  think  he  was  proud  of  this  disguise. 
He  refused  to  wear  his  heart  on  his  sleeve.  He 
would  not  "sonnet-sing  you"  about  himself,  nor 
bear  his  breast  to  the  curious  gaze  of  the  mob. 
If  Shakespeare  unlocked  his  heart  with  a  sonnet- 

80 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

key,  "the  less  Shakespeare  he."  But  the  fact  is 
that  Browning  chose  the  artistic  method  of 
declaring  his  message  because  it  was  the  only 
one  possible  to  him.  As  he  said  himself  in  the 
closing  lines  of  "The  Ring  and  The  Book," 

Art  remains  the  one  way  possible 
Of  speaking  truth,  to  mouths  like  mine  at  least. 

It  was  only  when  he  could  hide  behind  another 
soul,  caught  in  the  meshes  of  one  of  life's  sup- 
preme  crises,  and,  disentanghng  for  us  the  skein 
of  impulses  and  emotions  which  made  up  the 
heart  of  the  situation,  show  us  the  beam  of 
life  spread  out  in  the  whole  spectrum  of  its  hid- 
den constituents,  that  he  could  declare  the  truth 
as  he  saw  it.  Then  the  whole  matter  becomes  a 
very  ostrichlike  performance,  after  all.  The 
hands  are  the  hands  of  "Karshish,  Cleon,  Nor- 
bert  and  the  fifty,"  but  the  voice  is  Browning's 
voice.  Not  that  he  makes  them  utter  his  senti- 
ments directly — he  is  too  much  of  a  dramatist 
for  that — but  he  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  of  his 
attitude  toward  the  men  and  their  ideas.  He 
expects  us  to  find  for  ourselves  the  sophistries  of 
Blougram  or  the  failure  of  Andrea  or  Cleon,  but 
he  makes  it  very  clear  that  Blougram  was  a 
sophist  and  that  the  Greek  poet  and  the  Florentine 
painter  really  failed.  Partly  through  his  choice 
of  characters,  partly  through  the  revelation  in- 
volved in  the  situation  he  depicts,  partly  through 
the  ring  in  his  voice  when  he  is  speaking  his  own 

81 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

convictions  through  tlicir  mouths,  he  makes 
through  tlicm  his  j)ronounccmeiits  upon  life. 

"The  Ring  and  Tlic  Book"  was  intended  to 
teach,  among  other  things,  how  complex  a  thing 
any  human  action  is,  and  how  impossible  it  is  for 
those  wlio  are  in  the  very  thick  of  it  to  tell  exactly 
what  happened,  much  less  for  anyone  else  to 
understand  or  tell  the  whole  truth  about  it.  The 
Pope  declares  that  he  has  come  at  the  truth  by 
patiently  sifting  the  evidence,  gathering  it  bit 
by  bit  from  the  whole:  "Truth,  nowhere,  lies  yet 
everywhere  in  these."  It  is  only  as  one  senses 
the  truth  half-hidden  and  half-revealed  by  the 
spoken  word,  using  the  truth  in  his  own  soul 
as  the  touchstone  whereby  he  shall  recognize  the 
truth  in  others,  that  one  can  arrive  at  a  just 
estimate  of  men  and  their  deeds. 

This  is  in  effect  the  key  to  the  interpretation 
of  all  Browning's  poetry.  He  nowhere  declares 
himself  simply  and  directly,  but  his  art  holds  the 
truth  everywhere  in  solution,  whence  we  must 
gather  it  by  a  process  of  intuition  not  unlike  that 
whereby  we  interpret  life  itself.  This  is,  indeed, 
the  way  to  reach  the  truth  in  any  art. 

II 

By  reason  of  this  power  to  find  truth  in  solution 
in  all  human  experience,  to  find  interest  and  sig- 
nificance in  even  the  meanest  of  lives,  Browning 
will  remain  forever  an  enigma  to  those  simple 

82 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

and  forthright  natures  who  see  Hfe  only  in  two 
dimensions.  The  scientific  mind,  which  is  content 
with  purely  empirical  investigation  and  is  satisfied 
to  regard  classification  as  equivalent  to  explana- 
tion, is  bound  to  contemn  the  mystical  subtleties 
of  metaphysics,  and  no  less  the  luminous  aura 
with  which  art  clothes  the  bald  blank  surfaces 
of  reality.  The  tired  business  man  and  the 
empirical  scientist  alike  skate  blithely  over  the 
surface  of  life  in  blissful  unconsciousness  of  the 
hidden  depths  into  which  they  would  plunge  if 
they  should  pause  for  an  instant. 

One  cannot  avoid  a  suspicion,  with  Le  Gal- 
lienne,  that  the  literature  of  the  present  day  has 
fallen  under  the  same  condemnation.  Life,  with 
Nietzsche,  with  Gorky,  with  Hauptmann  and 
Sudermann,  is  mere  brute  horror  and  suffering, 
without  reason  or  explanation.  Even  the  mas- 
terly art  of  Anatole  France  can  give  it  no  depth 
of  purpose.  Holland's  "Jean  Christophe"  is  the 
massing  together  of  innumerable  facts,  the  minute 
details  of  reality,  gaining  dignity  from  sheer 
number  and  weight,  but  the  reader  must  bring 
his  own  interpretation.  With  the  British  novel- 
ists hfe  is  a  complex  of  interacting  forces,  inter- 
esting to  unravel  but  with  no  essential  meaning. 
"It  is  all  triumphant  art,"  but  none  the  less  it  is 
art  in  two  dimensions.  It  reminds  one  somehow 
of  a  Chinese  painting,  in  which  men  and  dragons, 
cities,  mountains  and  sea,  all  lie  flat  against  the 
paper,  with  no  regard  for  perspective,  no  sense  of 

83 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

atmosphere,  of  the  depth  and  fulness  of  reality. 
Maeterlinck  takes  refuge  in  a  mysticism  "as 
vague  as  ail  unsweet."  Kipling  alone  of  the  more 
important  writers  of  the  last  quarter  of  a  century 
reveals  a  positive  conviction  of  life's  reality 
and  significance  fairly  Browningesque  in  its 
intensity  and  moral  passion.  Yet  the  God  of 
Kipling  is  strangely  like  a  grimy  Vulcan,  a  huge 
and  unwashed  demiurge  painfully  striving  toward 
a  dimly  descried  goal  of  creative  purpose. 

It  is  with  a  feeling  of  relieved  hopefulness  that 
one  turns  to  the  delicate  genius  of  Alfred  Noyes, 
foreseeing  a  not-unworthy  successor,  if  not  to 
BrowTiing,  at  least  to  Tennyson  as  a  prophet  of 
faith  and  love.  When  Arnold  Bennett  comes  to 
the  last  chapter  in  the  earthly  career  of  one  of 
his  heroines,  he  entitles  it  "The  End  of  Sophia." 
Exactly  so!  Whether  he  knows  it  or  not,  Mr. 
Bennett  has  uncovered  in  a  headline  the  essential 
nakedness  of  his  philosophy.  Life  has  for  him 
no  real  meaning.  It  is  as  "a  tale  told  by  an 
idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury,  signifying  nothing." 
To  watch  the  antics  of  its  puppets;  to  trace  their 
rise,  development,  and  decay  through  one  stage 
after  another  of  commonplace  sordidness,  until 
one  can  write,  "The  End  of  Sophia,"  "The  End 
of  Maria,"  is  an  interesting  exercise,  save  that 
one  lays  down  the  book  at  the  end  with  the  weary 
question,  "What's  the  use?"  With  what  dif- 
ferent emotions  one  watches  Shadow-of-a-Leaf, 
in  Noyes'  "Sherwood,"  as,  the  gates  of  Fairyland 

84) 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

shut  to  him  because  of  his  sacrificial  betrayal  of 
the  secrets  of  the  future,  he  goes  sadly  yet  un- 
daunted on  his  way  with  Blondel,  Richard's  min- 
strel, singing,  "What  is  Death?     I  must  ride  on!" 

The  present  is  an  age  of  disillusionment.  Its 
young  men  are  world-weary,  too  depressed  even 
to  be  cynical.  The  sorrows  of  Werther  were  airy 
brightness  by  comparison.  One  by  one  the  fond 
follies  of  former  ages  have  been  laid  on  the  shelf — 
belief  in  God,  in  immortality,  even  in  goodness. 
The  Golden  Rule  is  that  there  is  no  golden  rule. 
The  moral  laws  are  but  the  traditions  of  polite 
society,  having  no  sanction  other  than  the  tribunal 
which  determines  which  fork  to  use  first,  or  how 
many  cards  to  leave  for  a  duty  call.  Professor 
Clifford  mourned,  "The  Great  Companion  is 
dead."  The  present  generation  has  not  so  much 
as  heard  whether  there  be  a  Great  Companion. 
Like  Mark  Twain  on  being  told  by  the  guide  in 
Genoa  that  Columbus  was  dead,  they  politely 
murmur,  "We  didn't  know  he  was  ill." 

The  result  is  a  literature  marked  by  scientific 
accuracy  of  observation,  by  a  knowledge  of 
psychology  at  which  Thackeray  and  even  Meredith 
might  have  marveled,  by  a  mastery  of  literary 
form  beside  which  the  works  of  Scott  and  Dickens 
are  crude;  but  in  which  there  are  no  great  con- 
victions, no  evidences  of  moral  passion;  whose 
characters  are  commonplace,  whose  incidents  are 
trivial  or  hopelessly  tragic,  whose  ethics  are 
those  of  the  barnyard,  and  whose  ideals  rise  no 

85 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

liigluT  than  llio  drawing  room  or  tlie  market 
place.  Small  wonder  that  the  man  in  the  street 
prefers  Robert  W.  Chambers  or  the  moving- 
picture  show. 

From  such  a  literature  one  turns  with  zest  to 
the  poet  who  sings, 

Have  you  found  your  life  distasteful? 

My  life  did,  and  does,  smack  sweet; 
Was  your  youth  of  pleasure  wasteful? 

Mine  I  saved,  and  hold  complete; 
Do  your  joys  with  age  diminish? 

When  mine  fail  me  I'll  complain; 
Must  in  death  your  daylight  finish? 

My  sun  sets  to  rise  again. 

The  thoroughgoing  modernist  in  literature  tells 
us  that  he  undertakes  to  face  life  as  it  is,  to  take 
it  at  its  face  value,  unbiased  by  any  prejudgment 
as  to  its  worth  or  meaning,  or  the  place  where  it 
must  come  out.  Unfortunately,  this  apparent 
refusal  to  judge  is  itself  a  judgment.  One  may 
say:  "I  will  gather  roses  and  skunk  cabbage, 
daisies  and  dog  fennel,  without  passing  any  judg- 
ment as  to  their  relative  beauty  or  sweetness  until 
I  have  accumulated  all  the  possible  material.  I 
will  mingle  diamonds  and  pebbles,  unbiased  by  any 
dogmatic  mid-Victorian,  bourgeois  prejudices." 
This  is  excellent  if  one  is  a  naturalist,  gathering 
specimens  for  a  museum,  but  it  will  hardly  do  if 
one  is  a  lover  plucking  flowers  or  choosing  jewels 
for  his  mistress.  Such  a  declaration  is  a  judg- 
ment, not  of  nature  but  of  men. 

86 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

Browning  starts  with  the  conviction  that  life  is 
worth  while.  Whether  the  conviction  had  its 
roots  primarily  in  the  poet's  heart  or  his  head  is  a 
question  that  need  not  detain  us.  At  any  rate, 
finding  men  lovable  and  interesting  he  finds  it 
easy  to  accept  the  philosophy  upon  which  alone 
such  loving  interest  in  mankind  can  rest.  The 
prior  assumption  that  such  a  philosophy  is  un- 
tenable cuts  the  nerve  of  a  vital  human  interest. 
The  attempt  to  hold  the  judgment  in  suspense  is 
evidence  of  unfitness  to  judge.  The  man  who 
says  he  has  not  yet  decided  whether  or  not  life 
is  worth  living  or  has  any  discoverable  significance, 
simply  bears  witness  to  his  spiritual  blindness,  his 
utter  incapacity  for  either  seeing  or  judging  life's 
essential  reality. 

I  have  pleaded,  it  is  true,  for  catholicity  of 
taste,  for  finding  pleasure  in  the  meticulous  and 
overwrought  goldsmith's  painting  of  Memmling 
as  well  as  in  Sandro's  delicate  line  or  Buonarotti's 
rugged  modeling.  By  this  canon  one  cannot 
deny  a  place  among  artists  to  such  masters  of 
form  and  style  as  I  have  mentioned  above.  They 
are  real  makers  of  literature,  interpreters  of 
their  time,  to  be  taken  account  of  in  the  history 
of  the  human  spirit.  But  one  may  enjoy  the 
drawing  and  coloring  of  Andrea  without  being 
estopped  from  pointing  out  his  spiritual  weakness, 
or  recognizing  the  loftier  truth  and  deeper  passion 
which  moved  the  pencil  of  Leonardo  or  Rembrandt. 
One  cannot  rid  oneself  of  the  feeling  that  in  both 

87 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

art  and  literature  tlie  present  a^e  is  marked  by  a 
brilliance  of  color  and  a  shallowness  of  treatment, 
by  an  absence  of  sincere  convictions  and  moral 
earnestness,  which  offers  a  painful  contrast  to 
the  centuries  immediately  preceding. 

In  this  no  doubt  the  characteristics  of  the  age 
in  which  we  live  are  reflected.  Some  months  ago 
I  was  returning  from  a  brief  Continental  tour, 
during  which  I  had  saturated  myself  with  the  art 
of  Rome  and  Florence,  of  the  Louvre  and  the 
National  Gallery.  Returning,  I  visited  the  Art 
Museum  in  Boston  and  the  Morgan  Collection  in 
New  York.  Passing  through  Chicago,  I  went  up 
to  the  Art  Institute,  and  found  myself  by  chance 
in  the  midst  of  a  multitude  of  worthy  folk  pouring 
tea-libations  in  honor  of  an  exhibit  of  the  local 
Art  Society.  Such  a  welter  of  vivid  greens  and 
blues  and  yellows,  of  hazy  outlines  and  sketchy 
drawing  I  never  thought  to  see.  I  thought  of  the 
horse  in  "Childe  Roland" — "I  never  saw  a  brute 
I  hated  so!"  It  was  all  highly  decorative,  and 
here  and  there  one  came  across  a  trace  of  sound 
sentiment,  a  bit  of  genuine  artistic  feeling.  But  I 
never  felt  so  intensely  the  sketchiness  and  vivid 
coloring  of  present-day  existence,  with  its  two- 
rooms-and-kitchenette  homes,  its  fifteen-cent  mag- 
azines and  ten-cent  movies,  its  Coney  Island 
mobs,  its  hordes  of  tourists,  its  divorce  colonies, 
its  blase  youths  of  seventeen — its  utterly  mean- 
ingless busy-ness  and  restless  fussy  chase  after 
nothing  and  advance  toward  nowhere. 

88 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

To  be  sure,  this  was  Chicago — what  could  one 
expect?  Art?  In  Chicago?  But  it  was  Chicago 
that  built  the  Court  of  Honor  in  1893.  And 
where  is  life  more  intense  and  modern  than  in 
Chicago?  If  the  art  I  saw  was  not  typical  modern 
painting,  where  shall  we  look  for  it?  At  the 
futurist  exhibit? 

There  is  another  side,  no  doubt.  Humanity 
is  sound  at  the  core.  There  are  plenty  of  plain 
folk  who  fear  God  and  keep  his  commandments, 
who  are  busy  doing  the  world's  work  and  feeling 
their  way  steadily  to  the  solution  of  its  business 
and  social  problems,  but  who  never  get  their 
names  in  the  papers.  And  there  are  writers  of 
magazine  stories  and  newspaper  poets,  and  young 
men  not  experienced  enough  to  find  themselves, 
who  will  yet  carry  the  tradition  of  literary  art  to 
a  loftier  achievement  than  any  of  which  the  smug 
and  complacent  Victorian  period  ever  dreamed. 
But  for  the  present  we  are  fallen  on  evil  days  and 
evil  tongues,  and  we  may  as  well  acknowledge  it. 
Perhaps  the  present  war,  with  its  painful  revela- 
tion of  the  shallowness  of  our  ideals,  of  the  moral 
nakedness  of  our  boasted  modern  civilization, 
may  bear  fruit  in  a  new  Renaissance  of  artistic 
and  spiritual  power. 

Ill 

What  is  the  matter  with  the  world?  What 
is  the  reason  our  poets  and  novelists  have  no 
message,  our  artists  no  feeling  for  form?     The 

89 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

answer  simi)ly  is  that  they  have  no  spiritual 
convictions.  They  have  lost  their  faith  in  God, 
and  hence  of  necessity  in  man.  Like  Maeter- 
linck's tragic  folk,  the  priest  who  formerly  led 
them  is  dead  of  old  age,  and  they  are  left  to 
wander  about  their  desolate  isle,  the  blind  lead- 
ing the  blind,  until  death  mercifully  makes  an 
end. 

Life,  to  the  thorough  modern,  is  mere  gal- 
vanism. The  soul  is  a  chemical  reaction.  The 
mind  is  nothing  more  than  the  succession  of 
mental  states,  the  stream  of  consciousness.  God 
is  another  name  for  Natural  Law,  and  Right 
for  tribal  custom.  Human  love  is  the  iridescent 
radiance  of  nascent  physical  passion,  the  "Dark 
Flower"  of  man's  life,  to  pluck  which  he  is  for- 
ever tempted  to  turn  aside  from  the  path  marked 
out  by  the  well-being  of  the  social  order.  The 
last  term  in  this  series  is  reached  by  Nietzsche's 
apotheosis  of  self-assertion,  whereby  he  erects  a 
generalization  of  biological  theory  into  the  ulti- 
mate principle  of  the  moral  life,  denying  the 
spiritual  value  of  love  and  self-sacrifice,  and 
declaring  Jesus  Christ  to  have  been  the  last 
enemy  of  the  human  race.  "Had  he  lived  to 
my  age,"  wrote  this  disillusioned  sage  of  thirty- 
seven,  "he  would  have  discarded  his  own 
doctrine." 

I  would  be  the  last  to  deny  the  value  of  this 
bitter  and  cynical  criticism  of  mid-Victorian 
tradition.      The   smug    hypocrisy    of    Gladstone, 

90 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

who  would  use  Parnell,  sending  for  him  to  the 
home  of  Mrs.  O'Shea  whenever  he  wanted  to 
consult  with  him,  but  was  surprised  and  shocked 
forsooth  to  learn  there  had  been  scandal,  and 
forthwith  repudiated  his  quondam  associate,  may 
serve  as  a  typical  instance  of  the  way  in  which 
men  had  learned  to  hide  their  heads  in  the  sand 
in  the  presence  of  the  ugly  facts  of  human  life. 
Both  religion  and  morals  had  grown  sadly  thin 
and  threadbare.  The  merciless  criticism  of 
Nietzsche  and  Ibsen  and  Anatole  France  tore 
these  rags  from  the  spiritual  nakedness  of  the 
world  and  set  men  to  work  to  weave  a  more 
enduring  garment  of  righteousness  and  faith. 
If  in  the  meantime  society  has  had  to  content 
itself  with  fig  leaves,  we  may  endure  to  the  end 
not  without  hope.  Only  let  us  not  make  the 
mistake  of  calling  fig  leaves  cloth  of  gold  and 
damask  drapery,  much  less  of  wantoning  in  puris 
naturalihus. 

The  source  of  the  thoroughgoing  skepticism 
with  regard  to  spiritual  values  so  characteristic 
of  the  present  day  is  to  be  found  chiefly  in  the 
enormous  mass  of  information  dumped  upon  the 
human  mind  by  the  investigations  of  modern 
science.  Crates  and  packing  cases  fill  the  hall 
and  the  parlor,  crowd  the  piazza  and  overflow 
the  front  yard  onto  the  sidewalk  and  out  into 
the  street.  Until  we  can  get  this  mass  unpacked 
and    assorted    and   put   into   place   we   sleep   in 

91 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

our  clothes  uiul  eat  eanned  victual  off  a  box  in 
the  kitchen. 

While  the  roots  of  modern  science  lie  far  back 
in  the  Copernican  astronomy  and  the  discoveries 
of  Galileo  and  Newton,  it  was  not  until  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution  overturnetl  man's  whole  thought 
about  himself  iind  his  relation  to  nature  that 
the  full  force  of  the  new  scientific  movement 
began  to  be  felt.  The  world  which  Kant  under- 
took to  interpret  did  not  differ  materially  from 
that  which  formed  the  subject  of  Aristotle's 
investigations  or  Plato's  more  intuitive  reasoning. 
It  was  somewhat  larger,  but  scarcely  more  com- 
plex. The  latest  thinkers  stood  on  the  shoulders 
of  the  earliest.  The  groundwork  of  the  thought- 
life  of  humanity  had  not  shifted.  Small  wonder 
that  many  human  problems  had  been  thought 
through,  and  poets  and  artists  could  interpret 
their  meaning  in  forms  of  undying  beauty  and 
significance. 

That  world  of  ancient  thought  is  gone,  for 
better  or  for  worse.  Whether  we  like  it  or  not, 
it  has  all  been  cast  into  the  melting  pot,  and  the 
thinker  of  to-day  must  sit  as  the  refiner  of  silver. 
None  of  the  pure  metal  will  in  the  end  be  lost, 
and  much  dross  will  be  cast  out.  W^hen  the 
whole  is  recast  in  new  forms  there  is  no  doubt 
they  will  be  other  and  better  than  those  our 
fathers  have  known. 

More  exact  information  has  been  brought 
to  light  in  the  past  fifty  years  than  in  the  pre- 

9S 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

ceding  fifty  centuries.  An  encyclopaedia  five 
years  old  is  worthless;  one  fifty  years  old  is  a 
curiosity.  The  first  effect  of  all  this  is  to  stagger 
the  imagination  and  paralyze  the  reason.  Faith 
is  really  no  more  diflBcult  to-day  than  it  was  in 
the  fifteenth  century.  It  is  no  more  unreason- 
able to  believe  in  a  God  big  enough  to  run  the 
universe  of  modern  science  than  it  was  to  believe 
in  a  smaller  God  for  the  Ptolemaic  system.  It 
is  altogether  a  matter  of  the  imagination,  not 
of  the  logical  intellect.  The  mind  has  simply 
been  clogged  by  the  mass  of  undigested  informa- 
tion. Darwin,  for  example,  saw  as  clearly  as 
anybody  the  enormous  enlargement  of  the  doc- 
trine of  final  cause  brought  about  by  the  evolu- 
tionary hypothesis.  He  declared  that  the 
testimony  of  evolution  to  the  Divine  Intelligence 
infinitely  surpassed  that  of  Paley's  curious  co- 
incidences. But  he  added  (I  quote  from  memory), 
"When  I  consider  that  my  own  mind  is  the 
mere  product  of  evolution  from  the  instinct  of 
the  lower  orders  of  animal  life,  I  question  my 
right  to  make  so  stupendous  a  generalization." 
It  never  occurred  to  him  that  it  was  the  same 
mind  which  had  first  made  the  equally  stupendous 
generalization  that  it  was  so  descended;  that  if 
it  were  competent  for  the  one,  it  was  equally 
so  for  the  other.  But  one  was  made,  naturally, 
before  the  far-reaching  results  which  flow  from 
it  could  be  evident;  which  results,  when  once 
they  had  presented  themselves  to  the  imagina- 

93 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

tion,  made  furtlior  reasoning  for  the  time  being 
impossible.  In  like  manner  John  Burroughs  has 
somewhere  said  that  it  was  easy  enough  to  be- 
lieve in  (lod  when  the  stars  were  mere  points 
of  light  and  the  sun  revolved  around  the  earth; 
but  that  he  eould  not  look  up  to  the  immensities 
of  space  revealed  by  the  telescope  and  the  spec- 
troscope and  maintain  his  belief  in  a  Providence 
which  looks  after  the  individual  life.  Once  more 
it  is  the  imagination  that  is  overcome  and  which 
paralyzes  the  logical  faculty. 

The  interesting  thing  is  that  it  should  always 
be  the  religious,  not  the  scientific  reason,  which 
is  disabled.  Darwin  accepted  the  conclusions 
of  his  reason  regarding  its  pithecoid  ancestry, 
but  declined  to  accept  the  further  implication 
of  the  Divine  Intelligence.  In  the  same  way 
Herbert  Spencer's  First  Principles  cut  the  ground 
from  under  scientific  no  less  than  religious  knowl- 
edge; but  he  and  his  disciples  proceeded  to  apply 
his  principles  to  religious  matters  and  utterly 
to  ignore  them  in  scientific  discussions.  It  is 
this  peculiar  twist  in  human  nature  that  makes 
one  long  to  believe  in  a  personal  devil. 

The  deeper  thinking  of  our  own  time  has 
already  transcended  the  narrow  limitations  of 
nineteenth-century  scientific  thought,  and  recog- 
nizes the  validity  of  the  spiritual  evaluation  of 
existence.  But  it  takes  a  considerable  time  for 
the  conclusions  of  science  and  philosophy  to 
percolate  down  to  the  common  consciousness  of 

94. 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

mankind.  Moreover,  knowledge  must  needs  be 
thoroughly  assimilated,  as  clay  must  be  thoroughly 
tempered,  before  it  becomes  sufficiently  plastic  to 
be  used  for  artistic  purposes. 

For  this  reason  the  literary  art  of  our  day  has 
not  yet  emerged  from  the  immediate  influence 
of  Darwin  and  Spencer  and  Haeckel.  It  is 
still  clogged  and  hampered  by  the  undigested 
mass  of  information  which  science  has  placed 
at  its  disposal.  Finding  this  material  too  vast 
and  complex  to  be  stowed  away  in  the  little 
pigeonholes  of  traditional  dogma,  our  novelists 
and  playwrights  have  broken  these  up  to  make 
room  for  something  new  and  larger  in  the  way 
of  a  filing  cabinet — something  elastic  and  readily 
revised,  like  a  sectional  bookcase  or  a  loose-leaf 
encyclopaedia.  What  they  have  failed  to  see  is 
that,  after  all,  the  new  material  really  is  intended 
to  serve  the  same  purpose  as  the  old,  and  that 
it  is  made  up  of  pretty  much  the  same  sort  of 
stuff,  so  that  the  old  classifications  will  serve. 

To  get  away  from  the  figure,  the  modern 
man  has  not  yet  come  to  see  that  life  has  not 
changed  a  whit  in  its  essential  needs  and  appetites; 
that  men  still  live  by  food,  still  work  and  play 
and  sleep  and  procreate  their  kind  in  exactly 
the  same  fashion  as  they  did  in  the  days  of  old 
Rameses;  and  that  by  the  same  token  the  lessons 
of  life  and  its  meaning  which  humanity  has  so 
painfully  acquired  through  the  long  years  are 
valid  for  the  twentieth  century. 

95 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

The  conclusions  of  the  older  world  regarding 
the  essential  truth  of  things  rested  in  reality  on 
something  more  than  seienlitie  induction.  They 
were,  in  effect,  an  evaluation  of  life,  and  while 
they  will  no  doubt  be  modified  as  the  result  of 
our  deeper  investigations,  they  will  be  found  in 
the  end  to  be  more  firmly  established  than  ever. 
In  the  meantime  they  may  well  be  taken  as  at 
least  working  principles,  as  the  tentative  basis 
for  the  arrangement  and  interpretation  of  our 
new  material.  The  house — to  go  back  to  our 
original  figure — is,  after  all,  our  ancestral  man- 
sion into  which  we  are  to  put  all  this  new  fur- 
niture which  so  clogs  the  passageways  and  brings 
disorder  into  our  life.  Perhaps  when  we  get 
to  it  we  shall  have  to  enlarge  our  dwelling,  put 
some  rooms  to  new  uses,  tear  down  certain  parti- 
tions, cut  new  windows  and  doors;  and  as  a 
result  we  hope  to  find  our  life,  in  some  new  age 
not  too  far  off,  at  once  simpler  and  more  com- 
modiously  satisfying;  but  we  need  not  burn  the 
house  down  after  all. 


IV  ^ 

It  is  the  distinction  of  Browning  that,  coming 
at  the  end  of  the  former  age  and  accepting  its 
fundamental  traditions,  he  finds  their  justifica- 
tion in  life  itself,  in  its  manifold  beauty  and 
interest.  He  shared  the  revolt  which  ushered 
in  the  nineteenth  century.     He  felt  the  impulse 

96 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

of  the  romantic  movement.  His  earliest  poetical 
writings — happily  suppressed — were  Byronesque. 
His  hero  was  Shelley.  For  a  time  he  was,  as  Mrs. 
Orr  tells  us,  "a  professing  atheist  and  practicing 
vegetarian."  When  asked  by  some  one  if  he 
were  a  Christian,  he  is  said  to  have  repelled 
the  suggestion  with  an  energetic  "God  forbid!" 
Nevertheless,  he  not  only  remained,  as  Chesterton 
declares  and  Havelock  Ellis  echoes,  essentially 
mid-Victorian  in  his  instinctive  moral  reactions, 
but,  carried  by  his  art  into  a  direct  study  of 
life  itself,  of  the  needs  and  passions  of  the  human 
individual,  his  conviction  that,  in  spite  of  every- 
thing, life  is  worth  living,  drove  him  back  upon 
fundamental  Christianity. 

This  phase  of  his  teaching  remains  for  further 
consideration.  What  I  want  to  reiterate  at  this 
point  is  that  it  was  the  artist  in  him  which  led 
him  to  the  truth,  as  it  was  the  truth  which  in 
turn  reacted  upon  his  art  to  give  it  dignity  and 
power,  which  makes  it  so  inspiriting,  so  spirit- 
ually satisfying.  His  "optimism"  is  at  bottom  the 
artist's  joy  in  life.  But  he  cannot  maintain  that 
interest  without  finding  himself  driven  to  justify 
it  by  convincing  his  readers  that  life  is  worth 
while,  and  interesting  because  it  is  worth  while. 
It  is  here  that  the  literature  of  the  present  day 
fails.  Bernard  Shaw  and  H.  G.  Wells  cannot 
maintain  their  enthusiasm  for  reform,  because 
they  have  no  real  faith  in  their  fellows,  and  hence 
none   in   any   social   order   they   may   establish. 

97 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A   BROWNING  LOVER 

CJal-swortliy  and  Arnold  Bennett  imd  Edith 
Wharton  try  to  (lispt^ise  with  the  (|ueslion  as 
to  lil'e's  worth  and  nieanin<,',  with  tlie  result  tliat 
they  no  loiii^^M-  iiiid  it  particularly  interesting. 
They  can  only  attract  attention  by  sheer  force 
of  self-assertion,  or  take  refuge  in  a  mysticism 
which  leaves  one  in  doubt  whether  it  may  prove 
to  be  the  mist  of  the  morning,  or  only  the  twi- 
light of  the  gods,  the  precursor  of  ultimate  chaos. 
At  any  rate,  at  present  it  satisfies  only  those 
whose  souls  are  equally  immersed  in  fog. 

That  Browning  felt  the  darkening  of  the  sun 
no  one  who  reads  him  thoughtfully  can  doubt. 
He  seemed  for  a  time  a  stronghold  for  those  whom 
Professor  James  called  the  "tender-minded,"  who 
sought  to  bolster  up  their  faith  in  the  midst  of 
the  growing  doubt  and  darkness  of  the  world 
— hence  the  Browning  Society  and  the  earnest- 
ness of  the  women's  clubs.  Indeed,  for  years  he 
was  regarded  as  the  protagonist  of  "advanced 
thought,"  and  furnished  texts  for  "liberal"  ser- 
mons by  preachers  who  found  the  Bible  old- 
fashioned.  At  present  I  fear  he  is  to  many  but 
a  stranded  derelict,  whose  art  was  so  clouded 
and  distorted  by  his  hopelessly  mid-Victorian 
philosophy  that  both  must  presently  be  cast  out 
and  trodden  under  foot  of  men.  Nevertheless 
one  wonders  if,  after  all,  it  may  not  be  that 
his  passionate  conviction  of  the  worth  of  life 
and  the  significance  of  human  destiny  shall  prove 
the  starting  point  for  a  more  courageous  literary 

98 


OF  IDEAS  AND  FORMS 

art  which  will  some  day  emerge  from  the  present 
flux  of  human  faiths  and  ideals  for  the  guidance 
of  the  new  age  which  is  to  be. 

My  own  hope  is,  a  sun  will  pierce 

The  thickest  cloud  earth  ever  stretched; 

That  after  last  returns  the  first, 

Though  a  wide  compass  round  be  fetched; 

That  what  began  best  can't  end  worst, 

Nor  what  God  blest  once  prove  accurst. 

("Apparent  Failure.") 


99 


CHAPTER  IV 

OF  ORTHODOXY  AND  THE  THEORY 
OF  KNOWLEDGE 

Chesterton  tells  us  that  he  set  out,  in  com- 
mon with  all  the  other  solemn  little  boys  of  his 
age,  to  be  in  advance  of  his  time,  and  to  pro- 
pound a  new  heresy  which  should  be  more  pro- 
gressive than  them  all.  When  he  had  put  the 
finishing  touches  to  it  he  discovered  to  his  aston- 
ishment that  it  was  orthodoxy.  In  other  words, 
when  he  seriously  asked  the  new  science  and 
philosophy  what  life  demands  to  make  it  worth 
living,  he  found  that  they  had  no  answer;  and 
when,  availing  himself  of  so  much  of  their  teach- 
ing as  seemed  to  bear  on  the  matter,  he  sought 
to  answer  his  own  question,  he  found  he  had 
been  anticipated  in  this  answer  some  nineteen 
hundred  years.  Of  course  this  discovery  brought 
him  into  direct  conflict  with  some  of  the  pet 
notions  of  his  contemporaries,  and  he  has  given 
great  offense  by  the  cavalier  fashion  in  which 
he  has  treated  the  solemn  pretensions  of  the 
high  priests  of  the  new  age.  He  has  been  re- 
garded as  a  sort  of  etifani  terrible,  who  asks  all 
manner  of  embarrassing  questions  and  reveals 
family  secrets  in  the  most  disconcerting  way; 
and   who,   but  for   the  restraints   of  good   form 

100 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

and  the  presence  of  company,  would  be  sent 
supperless  to  bed.  One  has  yet  to  read  any 
serious  and  sufficient  answer,  however,  to  his 
comments  on  modern  thought. 

It  was  doubtless  this  experience  in  the  search 
for  satisfying  answers  to  the  questions  of  the 
human  spirit  which  made  Chesterton  so  discern- 
ing and  sympathetic  a  commentator  on  Browning. 
For  the  poet  himself  passed  through  much  the 
same  movement  of  thought.  As  we  have  seen, 
he  shared  the  spirit  of  revolt  with  which  the 
nineteenth  century  began.  The  present  is  not 
the  first  age  which  has  paid  tribute  to  the  scien- 
tific spirit  or  has  questioned  the  teachings  of 
the  fathers.  The  classicism  which  was  displaced 
by  the  romantic  movement  in  literature  and  art 
during  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury was  quite  as  smugly  superficial  as  the  mid- 
Victorian  period,  and  was  as  energetically  repu- 
diated by  the  generation  which  succeeded.  Our 
young  men  shrug  their  shoulders  at  any  idea  older 
than  Darwin;  the  French  Revolution  abohshed 
the  calendar  and  decreed  that  1793  should  be  the 
Year  One. 


No  youth  of  sensitive  soul,  least  of  all  a  poet, 
could  escape  the  influence  of  such  a  period. 
Byron  was  fairly  Nietzschean  in  the  abandon 
with  which  he  asserted  himself  and  his  right  to 
obey  his  impulses  no  matter  what  lesser  beings 

101 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

siittVrod  tluTcby.  Shelley's  iittitiide  toward  mar- 
riage iiuisl  have  satisfied  the  ideas  of  Inez  Mil- 
hoUand  or  Elinor  (ilyn.  It  is  not  to  be  wondered 
at  (liat  the  young  Browning,  that  slender  youth 
with  clustering  curls  and  lemon-colored  gloves 
whom  Mrs.  Orr  describes,  who  was  given  to 
flinging  out  of  his  Camberwell  home  at  night 
to  follow  the  camp  fires  of  gypsies,  who  lived  for 
two  years  on  bread  and  potatoes,  who  made 
his  first  trip  to  the  Mediterranean  the  sole  pas- 
senger on  a  small  sailing  vessel,  making  friends 
with  the  rough  crew;  this  son  of  a  middleclass 
English  home  whose  soul  was  always  too  big 
for  his  body,  and  who  lived,  beneath  so  common- 
place an  exterior,  such  a  volcanic  inner  life  as  I 
have  sought  to  describe — that  such  a  youth 
should  have  been  a  passionate  admirer  of  Shel- 
ley, and  professed  himself  a  freethinker  and  an 
atheist. 

But  Browning  was  a  greater  poet  than  Byron 
or  Shelley.  His  soul  was  tuned  to  vaster  har- 
monies. He  touched  life  at  more  points.  His 
nature  was  sounder  and  more  wholesome.  His 
intense  sympathy  for  the  human  spirit  in  its 
inner  struggles  and  aspirations  enabled  him  to 
extend  a  juster  valuation  to  its  external  condi- 
tions. Byron,  with  all  his  genius,  was  a  spoiled 
child,  selfish  and  vain,  whose  shallow  cynicism 
was  little  more  than  the  rage  of  such  a  youth 
at  a  world  which  will  not  lend  itself  to  his  whims. 
Shelley's   infinitely  finer  nature  was  equally  ill 

10^ 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

adapted  to  do  battle  with  the  workaday  world, 
whose  prejudices  he  could  never  understand, 
whose  conventional  laws  seemed  to  him  utterly 
stupid,  the  inexorable  conditions  of  life  in  which 
stirred  him  to  strenuous  but  ineffectual  revolt. 
Browning's  saner  spirit,  equally  conscious  of  the 
shallowness  of  conventional  morality  and  the 
stupidity  of  social  rules,  nevertheless  felt  be- 
neath the  traditions  of  the  world  the  instinctive 
workings  of  the  moral  consciousness  and  recog- 
nized in  them  the  necessary  conditions  of  life 
in  a  social  order.  Less  absorbed  in  himself,  in 
his  own  desires  and  emotions,  yet  impelled  by 
the  intense  individualism  of  his  nature  to  find 
in  the  soul-life  of  the  individual  the  chief  end  and 
purpose  of  human  existence,  he  escaped,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  lawless  selfishness  of  Byron  and, 
on  the  other,  the  equally  lawless  social  anarchy 
of  Shelley.  Life  to  him  was  full  of  meaning. 
The  conditions  with  which  any  man  found  him- 
self surrounded  were,  after  all,  but  a  "stuff  to 
try  the  soul's  strength  on,"  and  were  of  infinitely 
less  importance  than  the  manner  in  which  he 
conducted  himself  under  all  conditions.  Accord- 
ingly, he  wasted  no  time  either  in  morbid  self- 
pity  or  in  wild  revolt,  but  set  himself  directly 
to  the  task  of  understanding  life  as  he  found 
it  and  asking  himself  how  a  man  should  set 
about  to  get  the  most  out  of  it. 

The  path   thus  chosen   led  him  inevitably  to 
the  spiritual  problems  which  underlie  all  human 

103 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

existence.  He  was  concerned  not  with  causes 
but  with  purposes,  not  witli  explanations  and 
classifications  but  with  evaluations.  The  artist- 
soul  in  him  found  life  full  of  beauty,  but  he 
found  it  full  of  couflict  and  contradiction  withal. 
He  could  no  more  describe  the  joys  and  sorrows, 
the  sins  and  struggles  of  men  and  women  with- 
out asking  what  all  these  things  mean  than 
Turner  could  paint  a  sunset  without  analyzing 
its  colors  into  their  primary  tints,  that  he  might 
choose  what  pigments  would  reproduce  them. 

But  when  he  undertook  to  find  an  answer 
to  these  questionings  the  poet  was  led  straight 
to  essential  Christianity.  The  God  whom  he 
thought  he  had  discarded  became  the  only  sure 
foundation  for  life.  The  Christ  whom  the  churches 
so  feebly  represented  became  the  supreme  guar- 
anty for  the  primal  Love,  without  which  no 
meaning  or  purpose  to  human  existence  can  be 
found.  The  moral  conventions  which  the  British 
public  obeyed  in  such  narrow  and  superficial 
fashion  became  the  ultimate  bases  of  the  social 
order.  The  orthodox  notion  of  life  as  a  "pro- 
bation," where  the  soul's  choice  is  made  between 
heaven  and  hell,  became  an  interpretation  of  the 
hardships  and  struggles  whereby  men  and  women 
learn  the  lessons  of  this  primary  school  and  are 
fitted  for  graduation  into  the  larger  life  beyond, 
while  the  crude  pictures  of  a  future  state  painted 
by  the  preacluM-s  became  the  broad  opportunity 
of   an    immortal   destiny    which    alone   can   give 

104 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

meaning  to  the  brief  and  fragmentary  existence 
of  the  earthly  years. 

The  moderns  have  discovered  that,  with  all 
his  apparent  breadth  of  sympathy  and  uncon- 
ventional ethical  interest,  Browning  remained 
mid- Victorian  in  his  instinctive  moral  reactions. 
To  be  sure!  It  was  this  frank  acceptance  of  the 
main  outlines  of  an  interpretation  of  life  which 
set  him  free  to  work  out  its  deeper  meaning. 
The  poets  of  revolt  were  so  absorbed  in  their 
own  emotions  or  in  fulminating  their  bolts  against 
the  abuses  of  the  social  order  that  they  had  no 
time  left  to  ask  what  it  was  all  about  or  upon 
what  conditions  a  worth-while  soul-life  is  possi- 
ble. The  moderns  are  equally  self-absorbed. 
When  they  turn  from  themselves  and  their 
hysterical  demand  for  "self-assertion"  they  be- 
come pure  empiricists,  disinterested  collators  of 
unrelated  "facts,"  to  ask  the  meaning  of  which 
were  an  impertinence.  Browning  took  the  moral 
framework  for  granted  and  turned  his  attention 
to  life  itself;  not  as  a  museum  of  dried  and 
mounted  specimens  to  be  catalogued,  but  as  a 
world  of  eager  and  absorbing  interest  in  which 
everything  bore  some  relation  to  everything  else, 
and  whose  manifoldness  and  complexity  cried 
aloud  some  great  soul-stirring  message,  could 
one  but  interpret  its  meaning.  "To  find  that 
meaning  was  his  meat  and  drink."  And  when 
he  sought  the  key  he  founti  it  in  the  essential 
teachings  of  that  faith  which  was  so  crudely  and 

105 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

imperfectly  held  l)y  the  world  about  him,  that 
Christianily  wliieh  tlie  Revohilion  had  "bowed 
out  with  tluuiks  for  its  provisioual  services." 


n 

In  this  the  poet  has  given  double  offense:  he 
has  accepted  the  ancient  traditions  of  religion, 
and  he  has  gone  behind  the  empirical  facts  to 
their  essential  meaning.  This  is  being  tender- 
minded  indeed!  It  is  to  be  both  orthodox  and  a 
metaphysician.  Of  a  truth  this  man  was  no 
thinker! 

Thus  it  appears  that  the  suggestion  that 
Browning  was  primarily  a  poet  rather  than  a 
philosopher  is  one  which  may  cut  both  ways. 
It  has  been  adopted  with  suspicious  alacrity  by 
those  who  think  thereby  to  discount  his  influence 
in  the  world  of  thought.  I  read  a  vigorous  edi- 
torial in  a  Sunday  paper  the  other  day  to  the 
effect  that  while  it  must  be  admitted  that 
Browning  at  times  displays  genuine  poetic  feel- 
ing, as  a  thinker  he  ranks  far  below  Wordsworth 
or  Shelley;  he  was,  in  fact,  the  peddler  of  a  vague 
German  transcendentalism  long  since  cast  on  the 
rubbish  heap.  When  his  verse  is  real  poetry 
it  is  not  without  merit,  but  as  for  his  philosophy, 
pouf ! 

I  shall  not  discuss  at  this  point  either  the 
soundness  of  Browning's  philosophy  or  its  rela- 
tion to  German  transcendentalism;  but  I  venture 

106 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

to  suggest  that  the  fact  that  his  fundamental 
conceptions  of  hfe  rest  on  poetic  insight  rather 
than  on  logical  acumen  does  not  necessarily  dis- 
credit them.  The  critic  should  reread  his  Hazlitt 
and  his  Emerson.  Doubtless  a  poet,  in  certain 
moods,  is  but  the  weaver  of  entrancing  fancies, 
giving  "to  airy  nothings  a  local  habitation  and 
a  name";  but  in  other  moods  he  becomes  the 
organ  of  direct  spiritual  vision,  declaring  the 
things  which  must  be  true  whether  logic  has 
arrived  or  is  capable  of  arriving  at  them  or  not. 

A  good  many  years  ago,  in  a  Western  State,  a 
sensible  old  farmer  was  elected  to  a  quasi-judicial 
office.  He  went  to  a  friend  who  was  a  jurist 
of  experience  and  asked  for  some  suggestions  as 
to  the  discharge  of  his  new  duties.  "When  any 
matter  is  brought  before  you,"  said  the  judge, 
"give  your  decision,  but  don't  give  your  reasons 
for  it.  The  chances  are  your  decision  will  be 
right,  but  your  reasons  will  be  wrong."  Of 
course  what  he  meant  was  that  the  old  man's 
judgment  would  be  based  on  the  direct  working 
of  his  common  sense  in  the  light  of  his  long  ex- 
perience of  life,  while  his  scanty  knowledge  of 
law  and  his  lack  of  judicial  training  would  render 
his  legal  reasoning  highly  amateurish  and  un- 
certain. 

It  does  not  require  an  extended  acquaintance 
with  theological  and  devotional  literature  to  find 
in  it  a  wide  commentary  on  this  principle.  The 
scholastic  philosophy  which  afforded  the  frame- 

107 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

work  for  tlic  Divine  Comedy  has  passed  away 
with  the  PtoK'iiKiie  astronomy,  but  that  does 
not  hinder  motiern  readers  from  finding  im- 
mense spiritual  vahie  in  the  study  of  Dante. 
George  Ehot  was  a  devoted  reader  of  Thomas  a 
Kempis.  The  two  had  httle  in  common  on 
the  basis  of  theological  theory',  but  the  hungry 
heart  of  a  great  woman  found  much  spiritual 
food  in  the  insight  of  the  mediaeval  mystic.  The 
modern  world  has  discarded  most  of  John  Bun- 
yan's  doctrines,  but  who  has  not  been  both 
charmed  and  uplifted  by  Pilgrim's  Progress? 
Life  makes  its  own  impress  on  the  soul  of  a  deeply 
spiritual  man,  and  when  he  declares  the  lessons 
he  has  learned  they  are  valid  for  all  time,  whether 
one  can  accept  his  logical  and  theological  frame- 
work or  not. 

But  this  is  not  all  of  the  matter.     When  our 
farmer  friend  had  rendered  his  decisions  his  legal 
9,dviser    might    have    analyzed    them    and    have 
shown  the  principles  of  jurisprudence  on  which 
they  were  really  based.     If,  then,  the  decisions 
were   indeed   just,   they   would   bear   convincing 
witness   to   the   soundness   of   the   implicit   legal  | 
doctrine.     The  same  is  true  in  literature.     The  S 
formal  dogmas  of  a  Kempis  or  Bunyan  may  or 
may  not  be  important,  but  their  spiritual  judg- 
ment of  life  was  sound,  as  their  power  over  men^, 
in   succeeding  generations  testifies.     If,  then,   it 
can  be  shown  that  this  rested  on  certain  funda- 
mental convictions  regarding  life  and  its  founda- 

108 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

tions  without  which  no  such  judgment  could  be 
passed,  we  have  the  strongest  possible  testimony 
to  the  abiding  worth  and  the  essential  truth  of 
that  fundamental  intellectual  basis.  Whether 
life  rests  at  bottom  on  a  material  or  a  spiritual 
foundation  is  an  intellectual  question,  a  matter 
of  philosophical  or  theological  interpretation.  If 
it  can  be  shown  that  on  a  materialistic  basis 
spiritual  life  is  impossible  and  spiritual  values 
meaningless,  and  if,  nevertheless,  the  character 
and  work  of  those  who  have  seen  most  deeply 
into  life  is  such  as  to  convince  us  of  the  abiding 
worth  of  spiritual  things,  this  becomes  the  high- 
est possible  witness  to  the  truth  of  the  spiritual 
philosophy.  If  logic  cannot  lead  us  beyond  the 
material,  so  much  the  worse  for  logic.  It  is 
not  the  spiritual  universe  which  is  discredited 
thereby,  but  the  logical  instrument  wherewith 
we  have  sought  to  grasp  reality. 

This  is  the  essential  meaning  of  Bergson's 
philosophy.  In  setting  up  intuition  as  the  in- 
strument of  ultimate  truth  he  does  not  discredit 
logic  in  its  own  field  of  formal  science.  He  merely 
points  out  that  the  logical  reason  can  never  get 
beyond  the  cinematographic  reproduction  of  real- 
ity, it  can  never  give  us  reality  itself.  This 
comes  to  us,  if  at  all,  only  through  the  direct 
grasp  of  life  upon  life  which  we  call  intuition. 
A  hotel  in  a  Western  city  created  Homeric  merri- 
ment a  few  months  ago  when  it  wrote  letters 
to   all   the   actors   named   in   a  much-advertised 

109 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

theatrical  production  inviting  them  to  make  its 
hostelry  their  heuchiuarters  during  their  stay  in 
the  city,  only  to  discover  after  the  letters  had 
been  sent  that  the  performance  was  a  moving- 
picture  show!  The  actors  had  disappeared  be- 
tween the  films — nothing  came  to  town  but  the 
aj)pearance  of  reality.  The  criticism  of  Kant, 
no  less  than  that  of  Herbert  Spencer,  long  ago 
showed  that  logic  can  never  get  us  any  further 
than  such  a  lifeless  reproduction  of  reality.  Men 
live  and  life  goes  forward  not  by  the  logical  but 
by  the  practical  reason,  which  is  nothing,  after 
all,  but  the  frank  acceptance  of  intuition.  Achilles 
overtakes  the  tortoise,  Diogenes  walks  about. 
So  friendship  and  patriotism  and  love  and  re- 
ligious faith  maintain  themselves  in  experience 
and  approve  their  right  and  worth  to  the  heart 
of  man  despite  the  limitations  of  his  logical 
faculty.  In  like  manner  flowers  somehow  escape 
botany,  as  life  eludes  the  surgeon's  scalpel. 
Logic  can  analyze  and  science  record  the  bare 
superficial  facts,  as  that  water  turns  to  ice  at 
one  temperature  and  to  steam  at  another,  or  that 
Columbus  discovered  America  in  1492,  or  that 
the  invention  of  gunpowder  hastened  the  over- 
throw of  feudalism.  But  the  human  values  of 
these  facts,  the  emotions  and  purposes  that  grow 
out  of  them  or  have  been  put  into  them,  can 
be  given  us  only  by  the  poet  and  the  artist. 
Apart  from  these  human  and  spiritual  values 
the  facts  are  as  barren  and  useless  as  desert  sand, 

110 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

and  the  bare  cataloguing  of  them  an  occupation 
as  significant  as  playing  with  spools  in  a  home 
for  the  feeble-minded.  Science  is  of  use  to  the 
world  only  in  so  far  as  it  becomes  a  vehicle 
for  the  enrichment  of  life,  for  the  heightening 
of  human  values;  and  this  larger  enterprise 
waits  upon  the  spiritual  evaluation  of  reality 
which  the  intuition  alone  can  render.  If  in  the 
progress  of  this  discovery  and  interpretation  of 
human  values  certain  fundamental  ways  of  look- 
ing at  life  are  brought  to  light  which  alone  can 
give  meaning  to  the  events  and  experiences 
which  science  records,  the  logical  reason  has 
nothing  to  say  further  than  to  take  these  also 
into  account  as  material  for  interpretation  and 
to  incorporate  them  into  our  total  view  of  re- 
ality. Their  validity  rests  not  on  logic  but  on 
life. 

This  is  likewise  the  essential  meaning  of  prag- 
matism. Doubtless  the  pragmatists  have  con- 
ceded too  much  when  they  have  tried  to  do  with- 
out the  concept  of  truth  altogether,  and  to  content 
themselves  with  the  moving  film  which  looks 
like  life.  But  what  they  have  meant  to  say  is 
that  the  mental  and  spiritual  life  exist  in  their 
own  right  and  are  entitled  to  whatever  they  need 
in  the  world;  that  what  we  mean  when  we  say 
that  anything  is  true  is  that  it  ministers  to  such 
a  need,  and  conversely,  that  anything  which  so 
ministers  is  entitled  to  be  regarded  as  true.  To 
a  mere  layman  it  would  seem  that  in  order  to 

111 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

iiiJike  their  principle  broad  enough  to  cover  all 
hiniKin  experience  the  pragnuitists  will  have 
to  include  virtuully  the  very  demands  of  reason 
they  have  discarded;  that  they  will  have  to  take 
into  account  both  the  moving  film  and  the  life- 
movement  which  it  records,  and  that  provision 
must,  iifter  all,  be  made  at  some  hostelry  for  the 
flesh-and-blood  actors  themselves.  Bergson  seems 
to  have  come  nearer  to  a  sound  statement  of 
the  principle  they  were  "ettling  after,"  as  the 
Scotch  say,  than  the  pragmatists  themselves;  but 
the  pragmatist  criticism  has  been  immensely 
useful  in  setting  us  free  from  the  idols  of  the 
den  which  threatened  to  deprive  the  soul  of  its 
rights  in  a  world  so  much  bigger  than  logic  as 
this  world  in  which  we  live.  The  significance  of 
pragmatism  for  the  common  life  is  this,  that  it 
enlarges  our  conception  of  truth  and  gives  us 
courage  to  accept  the  validity  of  many  things 
which  we  need  for  our  happiness,  as  Tyltyl 
needed  the  Blue  Bird,  but  which  could  never 
be  confined  within  the  bars  of  our  logical  cage. 
It  sets  us  free  to  trust  our  intuitions,  to  accept 
those  immediate  convictions  of  truth  which 
reason  often  seems  to  discredit;  which  at  best 
it  can  only  confirm  but  never  originate. 

If  certain  ways  of  thinking  about  life  have 
proved  useful  to  the  progress  of  the  race,  if  they 
make  life  more  worth  living,  if  they  have  power 
to  lift  men  out  of  the  sordidness  of  material  aims 
and  to  make  them  more  truly  and  greatly  men, 

112 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

then  these  ways  of  thinking  stand  in  their  own 
right,  and  anything  in  the  teachings  of  science 
and  philosophy  which  seems  to  oppose  them 
must  be  discredited  as  at  best  but  partial  and 
half -understood  truth. 

These  spiritual  convictions  may  in  their  turn 
have  been  imperfectly  understood  and  wrongly 
applied.  There  is  nothing  in  this  line  of  reason- 
ing which  can  properly  be  held  to  establish  any 
particular  set  of  dogmas;  to  decide,  for  example, 
between  transubstantiation  and  consubstantia- 
tion,  or  between  supra-  and  infralapsarianism. 
But  it  can  and  does  bear  witness  to  the  creative 
principles  which  the  particular  dogmas  were 
attempts  to  express  and  which  must  be  taken 
into  account  in  any  thoroughgoing  interpretation 
of  human  experience. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  art  in  general  and  poetry 

in  particular  becomes  the  handmaid  of  spiritual 

truth. 

k 

,    .    .    Ay,  and  while  your  common  men 
Lay  telegraphs,  gauge  railroads,  reign,  reap,  dine, 
And  dust  the  flaunty  carpets  of  the  world 
For  kings  to  walk  on,  or  our  president. 
The  poet  suddenly  will  catch  them^  up 
With  his  voice  like  a  thunder — "This  is  soul. 
This  is  life,  this  word  is  being  said  in  heaven. 
Here's  God  down  on  us!  what  are  you  about?" 
How  all  those  workers  start  amid  their  work. 
Look  round,  look  up,  and  feel,  a  moment's  space. 
That  carpet-dusting,  though  a  pretty  trade. 
Is  not  the  imperative  labor  after  all! 

(Mrs.  Browning,  "Aurora  Leigh.") 

113 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

III 

It  is  noteworthy  tluil  when  Browning  does 
iindortuko  to  forinuhite  ii  j)liilosophy  he  antici- 
pjilos  the  attempt  of  pragmatism  to  discount 
pliilosopliical  scepticism  at  the  counter  of  the 
practical  reason.  The  poet  has  given  much 
offense  by  dechiring  the  impossibihty  of  knowl- 
edge and  attempting  to  substitute  love  therefor. 
Professor  Lockwood  devotes  the  most  important 
chapter  in  his  little  book  on  Browning  as  a  Re- 
ligious Teacher  to  a  critique  of  the  poet's  reason- 
ing at  this  point.  I  have  already  confessed  that 
his  attempt  to  find  philosophical  justification  for 
his  views  of  life  leaves  much  to  be  desired;  but 
what  Professor  Lockwood  fails  to  see  is  that 
Browning  was  a  pragmatist  born  out  of  due 
time,  before  James  and  Bergson  had  made  clear 
the  antinomy  which  lies  at  the  heart  of  all  log- 
ical reasoning,  and  had  justified  intuition  as  an 
organ  of  real  knowledge. 

What  Browning  felt,  what  all  poets  and  prophets 
have  felt,  was  the  profound  limitations  of  the 
scientific  method,  with  its  moving-picture  repro- 
duction of  life  masquerading  as  life  itself.  Brown- 
ing proclaimed  his  right  to  feel  his  way  into  the 
heart  of  life.  He  insisted  that  love  has  its  own 
organs  of  knowledge,  which  function  when  the 
reason  is  powerless;  that  the  honest  heart  can 
find  in  itself  the  clew  of  life's  maze,  while  the 
heart  which  is  blinded  by  its  own  moral  weakness 

114 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

is  bound  to  go  wrong  in  spite  of  the  best  guides 
which  knowledge  and  culture  can  afford.  It 
was  the  same  truth  which  Tennyson  felt  no  less 
strongly : 

A  warmth  within  the  breast  would  melt 
The  freezing  reason's  colder  part, 
And  like  a  man  in  wrath  the  heart 

Stood  up  and  answered,  "I  have  felt!" 

Browning  was  himself  a  splendid  illustration 
of  his  own  philosophy,  in  that  his  logical  reason 
tends  forever  to  lead  him  into  the  mists  of  spec- 
ulation or  the  hair-splitting  subtleties  of  casuistry, 
but  when  he  gives  the  rein  to  his  spiritual  in- 
tuition he  discovers  for  us  a  wealth  of  truth 
which  will  forever  enrich  humanity  and  remain 
a  helpful  guide  to  the  interpretation  of  experience. 

Thus,  while  maintaining  my  thesis  that  Brown- 
ing was  primarily  a  poet  rather  than  a  philosopher, 
I  am  impelled  to  take  back  with  the  left  hand 
what  I  gave  at  the  beginning  with  the  right, 
in  that  I  have  disclaimed  the  central  importance 
of  his  "teaching,"  urging,  rather,  the  artistic 
beauty  and  power  of  his  poetry,  its  unrivaled 
human  interest,  its  marvelous  portrayal  of  life 
in  its  variety  and  complexity,  its  dignity  and 
worth,  bidding  the  reader  give  himself  up  to  the 
spell  of  the  artist  and  take  no  thought  for  his 
philosophy;  now,  I  make  bold  to  declare  that 
it  is  his  spiritual  insight  which  is  the  supreme 
contribution   of  his  poetry  to  the  life  of  men. 

115 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

The  mistjike  men  have  made  is  in  looking  for 
this  insiglil'iii  tlio  ar<!:iimcnts  of  the  pliilosopher 
rather  than  in  the  art  of  the  poet.  Their  instinct 
was  sound  when  they  felt  him  to  be  a  great 
teacher,  their  error  was  in  undertaking  to  divorce 
his  teaching  from  his  art.  It  is  his  spiritual  in- 
sight which  they  have  acknowledged  when  they 
have  talked  about  his  philosophy.  This  is  what 
I  myself  found  in  him  in  those  early  days  of  my 
enthusiastic  discipleship,  before  the  recognition  of 
his  artistic  power  awakened  me  from  my  "dog- 
matic slumber."  It  is  this  to  which  I  come  back 
after  having  gained  the  broader  vision  of  life 
which  the  artist's  universal  sympathy  and  deep, 
spontaneous  gladness  have  created  in  my  soul. 
The  jewel  has  gained  new  beauty  from  its  setting, 
the  spiritual  truth  new  significance  from  the 
broader  human  interest  out  of  which  it  grows. 

What  I  have  learned  and  what  I  desire  to 
teach  others  is  that  not  only  are  we  compelled 
to  find  the  meaning  of  Browning's  poetry,  not 
in  any  simple  and  forthright  statement  of  truth 
in  which  the  poet  has  summed  up  his  intellectual 
convictions,  but,  rather,  by  absorbing  truths 
which  are  held  in  solution  throughout  the  whole 
of  his  work;  but  the  process  by  which  the  poet 
himself  came  into  possession  of  the  truth  is  not 
other  than  this.  He  gathers  it  out  of  life  itself; 
not  by  logical,  which  is  akin  to  chemical,  analysis, 
a  process  whereby  one  element  after  another  is 
isolated  and  identified,  but,  rather,  by  synthesis, 

116 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

by  a  sympathetic  identification  of  himself  with 
his  fellows  until  he  has  somehow  gathered  up 
into  his  own  experience  all  that  life  could  teach 
him,  whence  he  distills  it  for  us  in  the  alembic 
of  his  artistic  genius.    He  nowhere  gives  us 

pure,  crude  fact, 
Secreted  from  man's  life  when  hearts  beat  hard 
And  brains  high-blooded  ticked. 

Rather  he  everywhere  fuses  his  own  soul  with 
that  crude  inert  stuff,  whereby  he  rounds  it 
into  a  ring-thing  fit  to  wear.  And  when  it  is 
done  and  a  spurt  of  the  proper  fiery  acid  of  crit- 
icism o'er  its  face  removes  all  trace  of  alloy,  we 
have  indeed  pure  virgin  gold;  not  of  mere  fact 
but  of  essential  spiritual  truth  whereby  we  are 
brought  into  a  deeper  understanding  of  our  own 
life,  its  hopes  and  fears,  its  meaning  and  its 
destiny. 

"The  Ring  and  The  Book,"  from  which  I  have 
just  quoted,  serves  at  once  as  the  completest 
embodiment  of  the  poet's  ripe  thought  and  the 
most  perfect  example  of  his  method  of  arriving 
at  truth.  I  mentioned  the  poem  to  a  youthful 
literary  friend  the  other  evening.  "Oh,"  he  said, 
"you  must  admit  that  it  is  frightfully  long- 
winded."  The  Sunday  editorial  to  which  I 
referred  a  moment  ago  declared  it  "frankly  a 
bore."  The  learned  editor  of  a  certain  many- 
volumed  encyclopaedia  of  universal  literature,  for 
which  I  paid  two  dollars  per  month  for  an  oppres- 

117 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

sively  long  season,  dismissed  it  with  the  remark 
that  tho  poom  is  "twciity-lwo  thousand  lines  long, 
all  about  a  Jionian  nuu-der  trial."  Bui  I  think 
of  the  arid  stretches  which  lay  an  unbearable 
burden  on  the  soul  of  the  determined  reader 
who  will  wade  through  all  the  second  part  of 
"Faust";  no  man  has  ever,  unless  he  were  a  Ger- 
man critic,  read  the  entire  second  part  of  "Don 
Quixote";  six  books  of  the  "Iliad"  are  regarded 
as  sufficient  for  the  cultural  needs  of  the  average 
youth,  and  I  have  myself  never  been  able  to 
force  my  weary  mind  through  the  theological  dis- 
cussions of  the  "Paradiso."  Remembering  these 
things,  I  turn  with  delight  to  the  judgment  of 
Chesterton,  who  declared  "The  Ring  and  The 
Book"  an  epic  worthy  of  a  place  beside  the  classical 
masterpieces  of  poetic  genius.  These  were  written, 
he  says,  for  an  age  when  men  fought  with  dragons; 
Browning  wrote  for  an  age  which  fights  with 
microbes.  "The  Ring  and  The  Book"  is  a  micro- 
scopic study  of  the  significance  of  the  infinitely 
little.  The  poet  shows  us  truth  pieced  together 
in  tiny  fragments,  like  a  thirteenth-century 
stained-glass  window.  He  will  find  for  us  moral 
heroism  and  spiritual  grandeur  amid  the  dust 
heap  and  ash  bin  of  life.  So  he  rescues  this 
forgotten  woe  out  of  the  accumulated  rubbish  so 
vividly  described  in  the  Square  of  San  Lorenzo, 
this  sordid  police-court  record  lost  for  centuries 
amid  the  greater  crimes  which  displaced  it  in 
the  world's  gossip,  and  by  it  proves 

118 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

Our  human  speech  is  nought. 
Our  human  testimony  false,  our  fame 
And  human  estimation  words  and  wind. 

The  pure  in  heart  find  in  themselves  the  torch 
whereby  they  walk  in  a  plain  path  while  others 
wander  in  endless  mazes  lost.  Shallow  self- 
interest  and  idle  gossip-mongering  remain  blind 
and  unknowing  even  when  the  pure  gold  of 
truth  lies  patent  before  their  eyes.  The  pam- 
pered servants  of  church  and  state  prove  dull- 
witted  and  slow  of  heart  in  the  crisis,  while 
child-wife  and  soldier-priest  leap  headlong  to  the 
heart  of  reality.  They  pierce  through  the  tissue 
of  lies  wherewith  they  are  surrounded  and  lay 
hold  unerringly  on  essential  truth,  both  in  each 
other  and  in  the  demands  of  the  situation.  The 
plants  "imbedded  yonder  south,  to  mellow  in 
the  morning,  made  fat  by  the  master's  eye," 
yield  such  timid  leaf.  The  one  blossom  which 
glads  the  heart  of  the  Pope-gardener,  his  "rose 
he  gathers  for  the  breast  of  God,"  is  but  a  "chance- 
sown,  cleft-nursed  seed,"  "born  mid  the  briers  of 
his  inclosure."  The  plainest  principles  of  right 
and  justice  lose  their  power  when  committed  to 
the  guardianship  of  logical  systems  and  author- 
itative dogmas,  only  to  spring  forth  in  pristine 
splendor  in  the  heart  and  mind  made  sensitive 
by  loyalty  and  obedience, 

authentic  to  the  experienced  ear 
O'  the  good  and  faithful  servant. 

In   a   word,   goodness   and   truth    are   in   this 
119 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

world  forever  inextricably  intermingled  with  the 
evil  and  the  false,  the  sordid  and  the  common- 
place. They  are  to  be  discovered  and  disen- 
tangled, not  by  learning  or  skill  in  dialectic,  not 
by  scientific  investigation  or  philosophical  argu- 
ment, but  by  direct  spiritual  insight — a  faculty 
whose  effectiveness  is  directly  proportioned  to 
the  purity  and  loyalty  of  the  soul.  These  are 
the  things  which  are  hid  from  the  wise  and  pru- 
dent and  revealed  unto  babes.  The  pure  in 
heart  see  God,  and  they  that  do  hunger  and 
thirst  after  righteousness  walk  unperplexed  in 
that  path  which  shineth  more  and  more  unto 
the  perfect  day. 

Of  course  "The  Ring  and  The  Book"  means 
much  more  than  this.  It  is  a  cross-section  of 
life  itself,  wherein  we  may  find  glimpses  of  almost 
every  phase  of  human  experience,  traces  of  every 
variety  of  truth.  I  know  of  no  other  writing 
of  modern  times  which  contains  so  much  ripe 
observation  of  life,  so  much  wise  understanding 
of  the  human  heart.  As  Goethe  put  the  distilled 
wisdom  of  a  lifetime  into  the  second  part  of 
"Faust,"  so  Browning  has  poured  into  this  vessel 
red  wine  of  a  mighty  pulse  trodden  out  of  the 
very  heart  of  life.  To  find  only  one  meaning, 
or  even  one  chief  meaning,  in  such  a  poem  is 
akin  to  the  attempt  so  often  made  to  interpret 
human  history  upon  a  single  principle,  like  the 
influence  of  climate  or  the  working  of  economic 
interest.      The    very    complexity    of    the    poem 

120 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

itself,  in  its  plan  and  structure,  ought  to  be 
sufficient  warning  against  such  an  attempt.  The 
sordidness  of  greed,  the  strength  of  "the  terrible 
meek,"  the  significance  of  "life's  terrible  choice," 
the  virtue  of  tolerance,  the  sweetness  of  true 
womanhood  and  the  elements  of  the  strongest 
and  most  virile  manliness — these  and  many  other 
things  are  taught  in  the  poem,  up  to  the  Pope's 
analysis  of  the  problem  of  doubt,  the  defense 
of  Christianity  and  the  significance  of  faith. 
Herein  appears  the  futility  of  such  a  suggestion 
as  I  recently  came  across,  that  Browning's  mid- 
Victorian  middle-class  conscience  could  not  re- 
cover its  equanimity  after  so  fearful  a  breach  of 
the  conventions  as  his  elopement  with  E.  B.  B., 
and  the  poem  was  written  to  justify  such  an 
occasional  defiance  of  Mrs.  Grundy!  Such  crit- 
ical bosh  inclines  one  to  believe  not  only  in  a 
personal  devil  but  in  a  literal  Inferno  for  critics. 

The  theory  of  knowledge  which  the  poet  thus 
expounded  in  the  greatest  and  ripest  of  his  writings 
does  not  differ  essentially  from  the  philosophy 
set  forth  in  his  youth  in  "Paracelsus."  The  arch- 
quack  of  the  sixteenth  century,  whose  name, 
Bombastus,  has  been  perpetuated  in  the  word 
which  describes  his  most  glaring  characteristic, 
was  chosen  by  Browning  to  embody  the  passion 
for  pure  science,  for  the  absolute  intellectual 
mastery  of  life.  It  was  impossible  for  Browning 
not  to  make  him  human  and  lovable,  but  he 

121 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

does  not  disguise  liis  intellectual  iirrogance,  his 
contempt  for  humanity,  and  his  resulting  failure 
to  grasp  essential  truth.  The  (juiet  Festus,  the 
gentle  jNIichal,  are  infinitely  nearer  to  the  real 
secret  of  life  than  the  tempestuous  genius  whose 
eager  intellect  wears  out  his  body  in  the  vain 
attempt  to  master  life  through  knowledge.  Aprile 
the  poet  fails  equally  and  for  the  opposite  reason. 
He  has  tried  to  stretch  mere  sentiment  into  a 
garment  vast  enough  to  clothe  creation.  The 
unloveliness  of  tilings — and  folks — which  stirs 
Paracelsus  to  rage  and  scorn  drives  the  weaker 
nature  of  the  poet  to  madness.  Even  love,  apart 
from  intellectual  grasp  and  practical  effort  to 
serve  humanity,  fails  to  attain  to  the  true  secret 
of  life;  yet  Paracelsus  has  somewhat  to  learn 
from  Aprile.  None  the  less  he  continues  to  fail 
when  he  undertakes  to  put  his  learning  to  the 
service  of  his  fellows,  because  he  still  despises 
them.  He  has  not  yet  become  one  with  them. 
He  attempts  to  reach  down  to  them  from  his 
lofty  height  instead  of  stooping  to  share  their 
weakness  and  failure,  and  hence  he  still  must 
fail.  Truth  is  attained  only  as  one  learns  to 
become  one  with  all  his  fellow  men  in  their  struggle 
and  loss  and  sin,  until,  through  the  common 
experience  of  life,  he  arrives  at  the  deep  wis- 
dom of  sympathy  and  love. 

There  is  something  Paracelsus-like  in  the 
Bombastus  of  the  modern  world,  Nietzsche, 
with  his  immense  scorn  of  all  that  mankind  has 

122 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

held  sacred,  his  foreshadowing  of  the  super- 
man, who  by  the  sheer  force  of  his  will-to-power 
shall  bend  the  universe  to  his  own  ends.  Not 
otherwise  did  Paracelsus  shut  his  ears  to  the 
pleadings  of  Michal,  to  match  his  will  against 
the  powers  of  destiny.  In  Nietzsche's  case  it 
was  Paracelsus  who  was  driven  mad;  and  the 
age  which  lent  its  ears  to  his  demand  for  self- 
assertion  seems  likely  to  beat  its  head  against 
the  bars  of  the  moral  imperative  until  it  shall 
learn  again  the  divine  folly  of  love  and  sacrifice. 

IV 

With  this  recognition  of  a  knowledge  of  life 
to  be  attained  through  love,  of  the  intuition  of 
the  soul  as  affording  an  organ  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  reality,  we  are,  with  Bishop  Blou- 
gram,  back  on  Christian  ground.  For  this  is 
in  effect  nothing  less  than  religion's  appeal  to 
faith. 

Faith  has  been  variously  defined  as  "believing 
what  one  knows  isn't  so";  as  ^'credo  quia  im- 
jyossihile^ ;  as  uncritical  credulity,  an  attitude  of 
mind  which  accepts  equally  fairies  and  angels, 
mediseval  miracles  and  the  wonder-stories  of  the 
Gospels;  as  unquestioning  obedience  to  ecclesi- 
astical authority,  the  devout  acceptance  of  the 
creed,  reliance  upon  the  infallibility  of  the  Scrip- 
tures, and  so  on. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  faith  is  none  of  these 
123 


(XIXFESSIOXS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

things.  Faith  may  exist  in  company  witli  super- 
stitious credulity,  or  it  may  be  as  keenly  critical 
as  the  most  empirical  of  sciences.  It  may  render 
submission  to  the  church,  or  it  may  cast  itself 
boldly  on  the  spiritual  judgment  of  the  humblest 
individual. 

For  faith,  at  bottom,  is  nothing  in  the  world 
but  the  recognition  of  a  realm  of  truth  which 
transcends  both  sense-perception  and  the  log- 
ical reason.  It  regards  the  normal  demands  of 
life,  soul  and  body,  as  checks  drawn  on  the 
Bank  of  Reality,  whose  assets  are  the  universe; 
and  it  presents  them  forthwith  for  payment, 
refusing  to  believe  that  God  is  bankrupt. 

That  there  is  an  element  of  faith  in  the  opera- 
tions of  the  mind  itself  a  little  reflection  shows. 
The  science  of  Haeckel,  the  philosophy  of  Spencer, 
are  at  bottom  as  mystical  as  the  piety  of  Thomas 
a  Kempis.  The  only  real  difference  between 
them  is  with  regard  to  the  boundaries  of  this 
realm  which  is  reached  through  intuition.  Haeckel 
would  establish  the  frontier  to  include  the  know- 
ability  of  the  material  universe — its  conformity 
to  the  laws  of  thought,  the  axioms  of  mathe- 
matics and  the  presuppositions  of  physical  science. 
He  would  exclude  the  abstractions  of  meta- 
physics. Spencer  would  include  the  latter,  but 
would  draw  the  line  at  the  spiritual  longings 
of  the  human  heart.  Religion  simply  extends  the 
boundary  to  the  uttermost  limits  of  Reality,  and 
claims  the  right  of  the  human  sj^irit  to  hold  the 

124 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

whole  realm  of  Existence  in  fief  to  the  Father 
of  Spirits. 

Even  Chesterton  has  not  always  thought 
clearly  at  this  point.  He  seems  to  confuse  faith 
with  the  acceptance  of  authority.  He  reverses 
Blougram's  reasoning.  The  Bishop  defended  his 
adherence  to  the  Catholic  tradition  on  the  ground 
that  if  one  begins  to  examine  and  question, 
there  is  no  telling  where  to  stop : 

Cut  the  Naples  liquefaction — what  comes  last 
But  Fichte's  clever  cut  at  God  himself? 

Chesterton  says:  "The  church  has  shown  me 
the  meaning  of  the  highest  spiritual  realities; 
perhaps  I  had  better  accept  all  her  lesser  doc- 
trines as  well.  She  has  taught  me  to  believe 
in  God,  therefore  I  believe  in  ghosts  and  fairies." 
This  is  to  confuse  the  whole  problem  by  stand- 
ing the  pyramid  upon  its  apex.  Of  course,  if 
belief  in  God  depends  on  nothing  but  the  au- 
thority of  the  church,  then  to  question  that 
authority  in  the  least  things  is  to  undermine  it 
in  the  greatest.  But  if,  as  it  may  be,  we  accept 
the  teaching  of  the  church  regarding  God  be- 
cause that  satisfies  our  spiritual  hunger,  it  but 
clouds  the  issue  to  lug  in  the  discussion  of  lesser 
matters  which  have  not  the  force  of  this  direct 
spiritual  appeal.  Of  a  truth,  belief  in  fairies  is 
not  essential  to  belief  in  God — why  then  discuss 
fairies?  Since  many  men  have  actually  accepted 
the   spiritual   teachings   of   Christianity   without 

125 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

acknowledging  the  authority  of  the  church,  why 
insist  that  there  may  possibly  be  something  in 
the  Naples  liquefaction  or  the  celibacy  of  the 
clergy?  Granted  the  possibility,  it  but  darkens 
counsel  to  introduce  debatable  minutiae  of  doc- 
trine in  a  discussion  of  fundamental  questions. 
Suppose  the  church  to  have  been  wrong  in  a 
thousand  particulars;  cut  the  fairies  and  the 
doctrine  of  transubstantiation,  the  cehbacy  of 
the  clergy  and  the  infallibility  of  the  Pope  if 
you  like;  cut  even  the  historical  accuracy  of  the 
New  Testament  records  or  the  ultimate  validity 
of  Saint  Paul's  interpretation  of  the  crucifixion 
of  Jesus;  still  the  fundamental  historicity  of  the 
Gospels,  the  spiritual  significance  of  the  char- 
acter of  Christ,  the  essential  truth  of  his  religious 
and  ethical  teachings  have  not  been  touched — 
much  less  the  still  deeper  question  of  the  spiritual 
interpretation  of  Reality  itself.  Faith  may  accept 
the  last  and  deny  the  first  and  yet  be  entirely 
within  its  rights. 

It  is  noteworthy  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
Browning  saw  more  clearly  at  this  point  than 
most  religious  teachers  of  his  day  or  our  own. 
Whenever  he  addressed  himself  to  the  funda- 
mental problem  of  faith  and  doubt  he  stripped 
it  at  once  of  all  adventitious  issues  and  struck 
straight  at  the  heart  of  the  matter.  In  "A 
Death  in  the  Desert"  Saint  John  foresees  the 
ultimate  doubt  of  the  coming  centuries,  to  which 

126 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

the  traditions  of  the  gospel  story  have  become 
not  so  much  an  aid  to  faith  as  additional  matter 
for  question  and  debate.     He  hears  men  asking, 

"Was  John  once,  and  did  he  say  he  saw? 
Assure  us,  ere  we  ask  what  he  might  see." 

With  never  a  word  about  the  evidence  for  the 
historical  truth  of  the  story,  he  proceeds  to  point 
out  that  without  this  conception  of  life  as  grounded 
in  Infinite  Love  all  the  larger  values  fall  to  the 
ground;  that  either  the  story  is  essentially  true, 
or  else  man  is  left  to  feed  his  spiritual  longings 
on  his  own  nature,  which  as  the  highest  reality 
in  existence — the  only  spiritual  reality — must 
henceforth  take  the  place  of  the  God  it  has  ruled 
out;  which  is  spiritual  suicide.  On  the  other 
hand, 

The  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ, 
Accepted  by  thy  reason,  solves  for  thee 
All  questions  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it, 
And  has  so  far  advanced  thee  to  be  wise. 

In  Hke  manner  the  Pope,  facing  the  spiritual 
decay  of  his  own  time,  when  the  externals  of 
faith  were  so  implicitly  accepted  by  men  who 
failed  utterly  to  grasp  their  real  significance, 
asks  whether  a  new  age  may  not  be  about  to 
dawn,  in  which  faith  shall  once  more  gain  vital- 
ity through  having  to  fight  for  its  very  life  against 
a  doubt  which  shall  impeach  its  deepest  con- 
victions. In  this  manner  did  Browning  inter- 
pret the  age  of  doubt  and  spiritual  conflict  which 

127 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

this  modern  period  has  proved  to  be.  The  poet 
and  his  Pope  look  forward  iindaiinled  to  sucli 
a  contest,  assured  that  liowever  imperfect  our 
representations  of  spiritual  truth,  the  story  of 
Divine  Love  and  Sacrifice  must  inevitably  com- 
mend itself  to  the  heart  which  unfeignedly  seeks 
for  spiritual  sustenance. 

Two  things  in  Browning's  representation  of 
religious  faith  have  a  bearing  on  this  matter 
of  the  right  of  the  soul  to  trust  its  intuitions. 
The  first  is  the  insight  that  to  make  spiritual 
truth  as  self-evident  as  the  empirical  truths  of 
everyday  life  would  be  to  destroy  its  ethical 
significance.  Both  Saint  John  and  the  Pope 
employ  this  argument,  which  reappears  in  many 
other  passages.  There  is  no  moral  value  in  the 
recognition  of  the  facts  of  nature.  A  burnt 
child  fears  the  fire,  but  there  is  no  moral  quality 
to  such  fear.  The  obedience  which  is  purchased 
by  a  gift  of  candy  or  a  day  at  the  circus  is  not 
ethical  obedience.  If  spiritual  truth  were  as 
self-evident  as  the  axioms  of  mathematics,  then 
no  higher  motive  than  self-interest  would  be 
involved  in  its  acceptance.  The  man  who  set 
himself  in  opposition  would  simply  be  a  fool. 
But  leave  room  for  doubt,  and  at  once  the  spir- 
itual values  become  a  touchstone  to  prove  the 
soul.  The  man  who  wants  them  to  be  true  will 
live  by  them,  will  make  them  at  all  cost  the 
working  basis  of  his  practical  philosophy,  while 
the    man    who   prefers    a   life   of   self-indulgence 

128 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

can  still  find  opportunity  to  excuse  himself. 
Thus  life  becomes  once  more  a  task,  an  achieve- 
ment, and  the  just  shall  live  by  his  faith. 

The  second  is  the  kindred  assertion  that  the 
real  seat  of  faith  is  the  will  rather  than  the  log- 
ical reason.  Here  Browning  once  more  antici- 
pates Professor  James.  The  ultimate  question 
is  not  what  we  think  about  life,  but  what  we 
are  going  to  do  about  it.  This  is  the  meaning 
of  "Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Day."  The  first 
is  a  study  in  tolerance.  The  subject  of  this 
vision  of  the  Christ  is  first  taught  not  to  despise 
any  form  of  faith,  however  crude,  which  really 
brings  the  soul  into  contact  with  the  Divine 
and  inspires  love  in  the  hearts  of  men;  and  then 
he  is  warned  not  to  rest  in  a  mood  of  complacent 
indulgence  to  which  all  faiths  seem  equally  good, 
but  to  make  sure  that  he  has  himself  acted  up 
to  the  level  of  his  superior  insight.  The  second 
begins  with  the  line,  "How  very  hard  it  is  to  be 
a  Christian!"  The  poet  then  expounds  the 
vision  whereby  an  easy-going  and  self-satisfied 
soul  is  taught  that  faith  is  not  the  settlement 
of  intellectual  problems,  but  the  resolute  choice 
of  the  highest  good;  and  that  the  difficulties 
which  beset  the  upward  path  are  but  the  chal- 
lenge of  the  Almighty  to  shake  us  out  of  our 
sloth  and  self-indulgence  and  impel  us  to  the 
great  adventure  of  making  life  worth  while. 

I  thought.  How  dreadful  to  be  grudged 
No  ease  henceforth  as  one  that's  judged. 

129 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Ho  learns  how  degraded  is  the  lot  of  one  who 
is  given  all  this  world  has  to  offer  because  he 
had  i)roven  unworthy  the  higher  good  of  heaven, 
"left  in  God's  contempt  apart,"  "tame  in  earth's 
paddock  as  her  jirize." 

This  is  the  significance  of  "The  Statue  and 
The  Bust,"  which  has  caused  such  heart-burnings 
to  two  generations  of  moralists.  There  is  more 
hope  for  the  soul  which  resolutely  follows  evil 
than  for  one  wliich  failed  to  embrace  a  wrong 
choice  through  lack  of  resolution  to  carry  out 
its  evil  desires. 

The  sin  I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost 

Is — the  unUt  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin, 
Though  the  end  in  sight  was  a  vice,  I  say. 

You  of  the  virtue  (we  issue  join) 
How  strive  you?  De  te,  fabula! 

The  heart  of  the  matter  was  perhaps  never 
so  forcefully  put  as  in  Bishop  Blougram's  challenge 
to  the  smug  complacency  of  his  skeptical  inter- 
locutor, 

"\Miat  think  you  of  Christ,  friend,  when  all's  said? 
Like  you  this  Christianity  or  not? 
It  may  be  false,  but  will  you  wish  it  true? 
Has  it  your  permission  to  be  so  if  it  can?" 

In  a  word,  faith  means  not  merely  the  calm, 
philosophical  acceptance  of  the  intuitions  of  the 
soul,  but  the  resolute  purpose  to  act  upon  them, 
to  live  as  though  they  were  indeed  true.  Small 
wonder   that   the   easy-going    age   in    which    we 

130 


OF  ORTHODOXY 

live,  absorbed  in  playing  with  the  countless  new 
and  entertaining  toys  which  modern  invention 
and  discovery  has  placed  in  its  hands;  an  age 
which  has  agreed  that  moral  standards  have  no 
ultimate  validity,  but  are  mere  social  conven- 
tions of  doubtful  value,  and  which  seeks  in  its 
art  and  music  to  be  rid  of  the  restraints  of  form 
that  it  may  express  itself  in  the  untrammeled 
freedom  of  individualism,  finds  such  a  poet  "mid- 
Victorian"  and  no  thinker!  Nevertheless,  there 
are  not  wanting  signs  that  even  this  age  is  begin- 
ning to  awaken  to  the  emptiness  of  life  on  any 
basis  less  than  the  spiritual.  The  prodigal  cannot 
forever  fill  his  belly  with  husks.  Others  besides 
Chesterton  are  beginning  to  discover  that  the 
longings  of  the  soul  are  no  different  in  this  latest 
of  all  the  centuries  from  those  of  the  infancy  of 
mankind,  and  that  the  truths  which  were  valid 
once  shall  endure  to  all  time. 


131 


CHAPTER  V 

OF  STRUCTURAL  vs.  ORNAMENTAL 
TRUTH 

In  our  eagerness  to  find  intellectual  justification 
for  our  attitude  toward  life  few  of  us  stop  to 
realize  that  in  the  order  of  importance,  no  less 
tluin  that  of  time,  life  itself  comes  first  and  theory 
second.  The  digestion  of  food  does  not  wait  upon 
the  study  of  physiology,  nor  the  enjoyment  of 
roses  and  violets  upon  a  knowledge  of  botany. 

Stonewall  Jackson  is  said  to  have  had  in  his 
army  an  old  man  who  had  long  experience  as  a 
bridge-builder,  but  whose  education  was  in  the 
school  of  hard  work.  On  one  occasion  it  became 
necessary  to  replace  a  bridge  which  the  Yankees 
had  destroyed,  and  there  was  no  time  to  lose. 
The  General  called  the  old  man  into  his  tent  and 
explained  the  situation.  "We  must  have  that 
bridge  at  the  earliest  possible  moment,"  he  said. 
"Get  a  plan  from  the  chief  engineer  and  set  to 
work  at  once."  In  the  morning  the  general  met 
the  bridge-builder  coming  to  report,  and  asked, 
"Did  the  chief  engineer  give  you  the  plan?" 
"Gin'ral,"  replied  the  old  man,  "the  bridge  is 
done.  I  don't  know  whether  the  picter  is  or  not." 
Life  is  a  practical  matter,  and  the  building  of  its 
bridges  will  not  wait.     Few  of  us  have  our  "picter" 

132 


OF  TRUTH 

done  when  it  comes  time  to  report  to  the  Gen- 
eral. 

Herein,  once  more,  Hes  the  significance  of  our 
discussion  of  the  artist  in  his  relation  to  the 
philosopher.  The  poet  shows  us  the  bridge  in 
process  of  building — the  thinker  draws  the  plan. 
At  bottom  the  two  have  to  deal  with  the  same 
essential  principles.  The  practical  man  who  has 
learned  building  by  rule  of  thumb  does  many 
things  which  experience  teaches  him  to  be  nec- 
essary; the  engineer  knows  the  reason  for  it,  and 
can  adapt  it  to  unheard-of  situations.  When  it 
comes  to  building,  not  temporary  structures  to 
meet  a  sudden  emergency,  but  great  permanent 
highways  for  the  world's  traffic,  then  the  theoreti- 
cal and  technical  knowledge  of  the  engineer 
becomes  of  the  utmost  importance.  A  mistaken 
theory,  an  error  in  the  tenth  decimal  place,  may 
wreck  the  whole  work. 

But  when  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  is  finished,  or 
the  great  bridge  across  the  Firth  of  Forth,  then 
comes  the  artist.  He  draws  a  picture.  From 
thence  he  goes  to  a  rude  bridge  across  a  highland 
burn  and  draws  another.  And  when  the  two  are 
put  side  by  side  we  begin  to  see  that  the  essentials 
in  both  structures  are  the  same.  Both  rest  on  the 
same  laws,  both  embody  the  same  essential 
elements.  The  practical  sense  of  the  farmer  and 
the  theoretical  training  of  the  engineer  both  came 
to  the  same  thing  in  the  end.  The  artist  was 
neither  builder  nor  engineer,  but  his  artistic  in- 

X33 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

stiiicl  led  him  to  the  structural  features  in  the 
work  of  both;  and  so  he  revealed  not  only  their 
essential  kinship  but  also  those  things  in  the 
work  of  both  which  were  necessary  and  funda- 
mental. 

The  religious  faith  of  which  we  have  been  speak- 
ing, the  reliance  upon  intuition  as  the  touchstone 
of  essential  truth,  is  in  effect  the  necessity  which 
is  laid  upon  every  man  to  build  his  bridge,  and 
the  necessary  recognition  of  the  validity  of 
structural  principles.  The  theologian  and  phi- 
losopher are  the  engineers  who  work  out  the 
general  laws  of  building.  The  work  of  the  artist 
and  poet  rests  of  necessity  upon  the  same  laws  and 
emphasizes  the  same  essentials  of  structural 
drawing.  For  practical  purposes  under  the  con- 
ditions of  ordinary  life,  where  not  great  rivers  but 
simple  brooks  are  to  be  spanned,  the  ordinary 
man  may  learn  quite  as  much  from  the  artist  as 
from  the  technician.  This  is  what  people  mean 
when  they  talk  about  seeking  guidance  from 
the  poet  in  matters  of  faith.  It  is  not  the 
poet's  business  to  work  out  in  detail  the  technic 
of  life  or  its  fundamental  theory;  but  he  shows 
life  actually  going  on,  and  his  work  reveals  the 
truths  which  are  of  central  importance  as  that 
of  an  artist  reveals  the  structural  lines  of  a 
bridge.  Even  though  the  drawing  may  cover  but 
a  small  fragment  of  the  whole,  and  may  be  con- 
cerned to  display  the  grace  of  its  ornamentation 
or  the  spider-web  delicacy  of  its  intricate  fabric, 

134 


OF  TRUTH 

the  artist  cannot  avoid  showing  the  bearings  of 
truss  and  span.  The  more  perfect  his  art,  the 
more  readily  can  the  instructed  teach  even  the 
casual  observer  to  learn  from  the  picture  some  of 
the  essential  laws  of  construction. 

We  come  back,  therefore,  from  yet  another 
angle  upon  our  contention  that  Browning  is 
primarily  an  artist  rather  than  a  theologian. 
That  he  was  an  adept  in  the  literature  of  philos- 
ophy and  theology  there  can  be  no  doubt,  nor 
that  it  was  of  great  service  to  him  in  the  prac- 
tice of  his  art.  Michelangelo  and  Leonardo 
were  both  thorough  students  of  anatomy;  but 
that  did  not  make  them  anatomists  rather  than 
artists,  it  merely  rendered  their  art  more  perfect. 
No  one  would  think  of  going  to  them  to  learn 
anatomy;  none  the  less,  if  he  wanted  to  know  the 
essential  perfection  of  the  human  jBgure,  he  would 
go  to  the  Sistine  Chapel  rather  than  to  the  dis- 
secting room.  The  significance  of  Browning's 
religious  philosophy  lies  in  the  skill  with  which  he 
has  indicated  the  structural  bases  of  human  life. 
His  poems  are  not  an  engineer's  blue  prints  but  an 
artist's  sketches,  like  Whistler's  Battersea  Bridge. 
But  the  wayfaring  man  can  learn  more  about 
bridges  from  Whistler  than  from  a  work  on 
structural  engineering,  and  the  open-hearted 
reader  may  get  more  sound  theology  from  Brown- 
ing than  from  his  minister.  He  may  learn  what 
truths  in  life  are  necessary  and  vital  and  what  are 
subordinate  and  incidental;  and  he  gets  them  not 

135 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

in  skeleton  form,  detached  from  all  vital  connection 
with  reality  like  the  scale-drawing  of  a  structural 
detail,  but  in  living  relation  to  the  actual  condi- 
tions of  life,  where  he  may  not  only  recognize 
tliem  and  identify  them  in  his  own  experience,  but 
may  learn  how  they  are  combined  with  all  that 
goes  to  make  up  the  complexity  of  everyday  life. 

Seen  from  this  point  of  view,  these  keystones 
and  trusses  in  Browning's  poetry  become  not  the 
poet's  personal  opinions,  which  carry  no  more 
weight  than  anybody's  opinions;  they  become  the 
unconscious  testimony  of  art  to  essential  truth. 
They  reveal  the  terrible  spans  and  arches  of  reality, 
and  make  clear  both  the  piers  upon  which  they 
rest  and  the  ties  and  braces  by  which  they  are 
held  together. 

We  must  make  haste  to  get  away  from  this 
figure,  w'hich  is  beginning  to  run  upon  all  fours. 
The  upshot  of  the  whole  matter  is  that  the  poet's 
principal  stress  seems  to  fall  upon  ideas  which  are 
vital  in  human  experience,  which  have  power  to 
give  meaning  and  color  to  life,  and  without  which, 
as  the  state  of  mind  of  the  present  generation 
shows,  life  is  empty  and  barren,  a  thing  of  shreds 
and  patches.  Let  us  go  on  now  to  see  what  are 
these  structural  truths  in  the  poet's  message. 


The  corner  stone  of  Browning's  thinking  is  the 
idea  of  God. 

136 


OF  TRUTH 

Like  practically  everyone  else  before  the  last 
quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Browning 
takes  God  for  granted.  It  is  true  the  earlier 
period  of  revolt  denied  the  divine  existence. 
Comte  had  declared  that  the  idea  of  Law  had 
come  to  fill  the  all-important  place  in  human 
thought;  that  it  had  "conducted  God  to  the 
frontiers  of  the  universe  and  bowed  him  out, 
with  thanks  for  his  provisional  services."  Never- 
theless, Voltaire  founded  a  church  in  the  name  of 
God,  and  the  Revolution  invented  a  Deity  for 
the  new  age,  to  take  the  place  of  the  one  which 
had  been  discarded.  The  spiritual  interpretation 
of  life  was  grounded  so  deeply  in  human  experience 
and  thought  that  it  could  be  dislodged  only  by 
some  thoroughgoing  revolution  like  that  afforded 
by  the  doctrine  of  evolution. 

Browning  felt  the  growing  chill  of  scientific 
impersonalism,  and  sought  to  meet  it  by  argument 
in  the  mouths  of  Blougram  and  Saint  John  and 
the  Pope.  The  gist  of  that  argument,  as  we  have 
seen,  consisted  of  a  defense  of  faith  as  an  organ  of 
knowledge,  or  at  least  of  life — a  mode  of  reasoning 
in  which  Browning  anticipated  the  apologetic 
method  of  the  present  day.  The  argument,  as  I 
believe,  is  both  sound  and  unanswerable,  but 
belief  is  seldom  produced  by  argument.  Of  im- 
mensely greater  spiritual  value  is  the  place  held 
by  the  idea  of  God  as  the  presupposition  of  the 
poet's  work,  the  ground  of  his  whole  view  of  life. 
In  "La  Saisiaz"  Browning  writes  himself  as  one 

137 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

who  "Bdiovod  in  tlic  Soul,  was  very  sure  of  God," 
and  the  lino,  in  cfl'ecl,  sums  up  liis  whole  philos- 
ophy. The  eonviclion  that  life  in  its  essence  is  no 
barren  and  meaningless  phantasmagoria  of  eva- 
nescent npj)arilions,  still  less  the  crude  by-product 
of  a  blind  and  purposeless  mechanism,  is  the  back- 
ground of  all  he  wrote. 

It  is  expressed  in  the  eager  assurance  of  Paracel- 
sus: 

"In  some  time,  his  good  time,  I  shall  arrive: 
He  guides  me  and  the  bird.     In  his  good  time!" 

It  is  the  faith  that  sings  in  the  happy  voice  of 
Pippa: 

"God's  in  his  heaven, 

All's  right  with  the  world." 

I  liave  heard  parsons  in  sermons  denounce  this 
sentiment,  declaring  that  very  much  is  wrong 
with  the  world;  and  that,  besides,  God  is  not  in 
heaven  at  all,  but  is  immanent  in  the  whole  crea- 
tion. The  good  men  failed  to  see  that  the  second 
part  of  their  doctrine  destroyed  the  first;  and  that 
the  very  idea  of  God  means  that,  however  mighty 
the  storm,  the  ship  of  creation  is  not  drifting 
rudderless  and  masterless  through  Chaos,  but 
her  Captain  is  on  the  bridge,  and  "All's  well!" 
The  whole  story  of  Pippa  is  a  commentary  on  her 
song,  a  suggestion  of  the  God  who  ruleth  all 
things  according  to  the  counsels  of  his  own  will. 

The  same  faith  forms  the  groundwork  of  the 
calm  philosophy  of  the  Pope,  summed  up  in  his 
conviction   that  even   incurable  moral   blindness 

138 


OF  TRUTH 

and  willful  rebelliousness  cannot  ultimately 
thwart  the  infinite  purpose  for  good  in  which  the 
human  soul  has  its  root.  The  positive  "which 
must  not  be"  disposes  even  of  ultimate  moral 
failure  as  unthinkable. 

If  sometimes  the  assertion  of  this  faith  seems 
somewhat  robustious,  if  it  gives  rise  to  an  opti- 
mism so  thoroughgoing  as  almost  to  abolish  the 
distinction  between  good  and  evil,  we  must 
remember  the  currents  of  thought  which  even 
during  the  poet's  lifetime  were  bearing  the  modern 
world  in  the  direction  of  a  barren  and  mechanical 
interpretation  of  reality.  Tennyson,  who  was 
much  more  sensitive  than  Browning  to  the 
thought-world  with  which  he  was  surrounded, 
finds  himself  at  times  well-nigh  swept  off  his  feet, 
and  can  only  "faintly  trust  the  larger  hope." 
The  positive  assurance  of  his  brother  poet  that 
the  spiritual  interpretation  of  life  must  be  true,  no 
matter  what  difficulties  of  logic  or  of  scientific 
induction  stand  in  the  way,  is  a  tonic  and  whole- 
some influence  in  the  spiritual  life  of  the  world. 

In  this  Browning  is  something  more  than  a 
mere  exponent  of  religious  orthodoxy.  With  the 
greatest  among  his  contemporaries,  Carlyle  and 
Ruskin  and  Matthew  Arnold,  he  sets  himself 
definitely  in  opposition  to  the  pietistic  faith  of  the 
mid-Victorian  era.  But  equally  with  them  he 
maintains  the  essentially  Christian  view  of  life 
and  its  foundations,  and  he  does  so  with  a  serener 
confidence  in  its  stability.     He  knows  nothing  of 

139 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

the  unotisy  misgivings,  tlio  pathetic  spiritual 
lonehness  wliieh  k'nds  sucli  a  tragic  air  to  their 
\vrilings.  Tlie  inehinclioly  of  Arnold,  the  fierce- 
ness of  Carlyle,  the  gloom  which  often  settles  upon 
Ruskin,  had  their  birth  in  a  haunting  sense  of 
insecurity  even  as  regards  those  truths  which 
they  asserted  most  earnestly.  To  Browning's 
healthier  spirit,  that  life  should  not  have  a  real 
and  vital  meaning,  was  unthinkable.  Such  a 
meaning  nuist  root  in  a  spmtual  interpretation 
of  the  universe.  Given  that,  and  everything  else 
follows  as  a  matter  of  course. 

I  reach  into  the  dark, 
Feel  what  I  cannot  see,  and  still  faith  stands: 
I  can  believe  this  dread  machinery 
Of  sin  and  sorrow,  would  confound  me  else, 
Devised — all  pain,  at  most  expenditure 
Of  pain  by  Who  devised  pain — to  evolve, 
By  new  machinery  in  counterpart, 
The  moral  qualities  of  man — how  else? — 
To  make  him  love  in  turn  and  be  beloved, 
Creative  and  self-sacrificing  too, 
And  thus  eventually  Godlike. 

This  same  clearness  of  vision  saved  the  poet  from 
a  confusion  of  thought  into  which  the  modern 
world  has  fallen.  Browning  insists  that  the 
spiritual  interpretation  of  life  stands  or  falls  with 
the  idea  of  God.  Since  his  day  there  have  not 
been  wanting  those  who  have  tried  to  concede  the 
impersonal  mechanism  demanded  in  the  name  of 
science,  but  at  the  same  time  to  maintain  the 
spiritual  evaluation  of  life.  Browning  has  small 
I)atience  with  that  sort  of  thing.     He  knows  there 

140 


OF  TRUTH 

is  in  reality  no  middle  ground  between  the  per- 
sonal and  the  mechanical.  As  Saint  John  declares, 
if  there  be  no  God,  then  man  himself  takes  the 
place  of  God,  which  is  unthinkable. 

The  poet  knows  as  well  as  anyone  else  how 
feeble  is  human  speech  when  it  comes  to  deal  with 
ultimate  realities: 

O  Thou — as  represented  here  to  me 
In  such  conception  as  my  soul  allows — 
Under  Thy  measureless,  my  atom  width! — 

Existent  somewhere,  somehow,  as  a  whole; 
Here,  as  a  whole  proportioned  to  our  sense — 
There  (which  is  nowhere,  speech  must  babble  thus). 
In  the  absolute  immensity,  the  whole 
Appreciable  solely  by  Thyself. 

It  will  be  said  that  this  is  philosophy,  not 
poetry;  but  I  maintain  that  it  is  the  representation 
of  a  mood,  a  spiritual  emotion  in  the  soul  of  the 
Pope,  rather  than  a  piece  of  pure  reason.  It  is 
an  attempt  to  voice  the  feeling  that  a  truth  too 
big  for  words  has  notwithstanding  made  its  own 
ineffaceable  impress  on  the  soul.  This  recognition 
of  the  limitations  of  human  thought  is  very  far 
from  the  agnosticism  which,  starting  from  this 
recognition,  denies  all  validity  to  man's  religious 
aspirations.  It  is  merely  to  declare,  with  the 
apostle,  that  "No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time," 
that  "Eye  hath  not  seen,  nor  ear  heard,  neither 
hath  it  entered  into  the  heart  of  man." 

There  is  no  particular  objection  to  the  asser- 
tion often  met  with  nowadays  that  God  must  be 

141 


(X)NFKSSI()NS  OF  A  IJUOWNING  LOVER 

supra-i)orsoiKil.  j)ic)vi(kMl  this  he  not  made  the 
starting  point  lor  practical  unl'aitli.  What  Brown- 
ing everywhere  insisted  upon  is  that  God  must  be 
conceived  as  the  Hving  ground  of  all  that  is  deepest 
and  best  in  man,  and  as  such  capable  of  entering 
into  some  sort  of  direct  and  personal  relation  with 
his  creatures.  He  must  be  not  only  Power  but 
Love.  To  prate  of  an  Impersonal  Love  is  nothing 
but  confusion  of  thought. 

The  classical  expression  of  the  poet's  viewpoint 
is  found  in  the  "Epilogue"  to  "Dramatis  Personae." 
Here  the  First  Speaker,  as  David,  represents  the 
old  anthropomorphism  which  found  God  in  par- 
ticular places  and  persons  and  not  in  others: 

For  the  presence  of  the  Lord, 
In  the  glory  of  His  cloud, 

Had  filled  the  House  of  the  Lord. 

The  Second  Speaker,  as  Renan,  represents  the 
agnostic  chill  that  had  fallen  upon  the  nineteenth 
century  as  the  purported  revelation  of  God  to 
the  Hebrew  nation  faded  into  the  mist  of  history, 
and  men  began  to  ask  whether,  if  there  were  any 
such  God,  he  ever  had  or,  indeed,  could  make 
himself  known  to  men: 

Watchers  of  twilight,  is  the  worst  averred? 

We  shall  not  look  up,  know  ourselves  are  seen, 
Speak,  and  be  sure  that  we  again  are  heard? 

0  dread  succession  to  a  dizzy  post. 

Sad  sway  of  scepter  whose  mere  touch  appalls. 
Ghastly  enthronement,  cursed  by  those  the  most 

On  wliose  repugnant  brow  the  crown  next  falls. 

142 


OF  TRUTH 

The  poet  himself,  as  the  Third  Speaker,  then 
proclaims  his  larger  faith.  As  the  sea,  however 
boundless  and  universal,  is  nevertheless  in  par- 
ticular and  individual  contact  with  each  rock,  so 
the  Universal  Soul  has  actually  entered  into 
personal  relations  with  the  individual  human 
soul  even  in  constituting  it  an  individual: 

When  you  acknowledge  that  one  world  could  do 
All  the  diverse  work,  old  yet  ever  new. 
Divide  us  each  from  other,  me  from  you, 

Why,  where's  the  need  of  Temple,  when  the  walls 
O'  the  world  are  that?     What  use  of  swells  and  falls 
From  Levites'  choir,  Priests'  cries,  and  trumpet-calls? 

That  one  Face,  far  from  vanish,  rather  grows, 
Or  decomposes  but  to  recompose. 
Become  my  universe  that  feels  and  knows. 

This  is  in  reality  all  that  Christianity  has  ever 
meant  by  the  "personality"  of  God.  No  thinking 
man  has  ever  believed  in  Haeckel's  "gaseous  ver- 
tebrate," an  old  man  with  a  white  beard.  But 
Christianity  has  refused  to  believe  that  the  human 
consciousness  is  the  only  or  the  highest  form  of 
spiritual  existence.  It  insists  on  finding  in  the 
loftiest  characteristics  of  humanity  only  the 
Divine  image,  and  turns  trustingly  toward  the 
Father  of  Spirits,  confident  that  in  him  men  will 
find  their  heavenly  Father.  ^ 

II 

Of  course  there  is  an  element  of  danger  in  this 
proceeding.     There  is  always  the  possibility  that 

143 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

men  will  read  their  own  liinitalions  and  imper- 
fections into  the  idea  of  Go<l,  and  make  him  of 
like  passions  witli  themselves.  Not  paganism 
alone  has  suil'ered  from  this  false  and  fatal  anthro- 
pomorphism. In  "Caliban  upon  Setebos"  Brown- 
ing has  given  us  an  elaboration  of  the  text,  "Thou 
thoughtest  that  I  was  altogether  such  an  one  as 
thyself." 

Those  conmientators  who  see  in  this  poem  an 
attempt  to  make  a  serious  contribution  to  the 
science  of  anthropology  and  to  indicate  how  the 
idea  of  God  arose  in  the  soul  of  the  cave  man  may 
be  right;  but  if  so,  it  is  the  only  poem  in  all  the 
work  of  a  long  life  which  has  this  abstract  scien- 
tific character.  It  seems  to  be  rather  an  exposi- 
tion of  the  truth  that  "an  honest  God's  the 
noblest  work  of  man,"  and  that  when  a  beastly 
man  reads  his  own  beastliness  into  the  character 
of  God  the  result  is  grotesque  enough  to  furnish 
its  own  refutation.  One  cannot  but  suspect  that 
the  poet  had  in  mind  certain  forms  of  theology 
which  have  actually  been  current  at  various  times 
in  Christian  history. 

The  story  is  well  known  of  the  retort  courteous 
made  by  John  Lord,  afterward  famous  for  "The 
Beacon-Lights  of  History,"  to  the  committee  which 
was  examining  him  for  ordination  over  a  church 
in  Connecticut.  Among  other  questions  put  to 
him  was  that  one  which  was  a  favorite  with  our 
Puritan  ancestors,  whether  he  was  willing  to  be 
damned  for  the  glory  of  God.     The  young  man 

144 


OF  TRUTH 

replied  that  he  had  not  attained  to  that  lofty  state 
of  grace,  but  that  he  was  perfectly  willing  the 
committee  should  be!  Needless  to  say,  he  was 
not  ordained. 

The  theological  conception  represented  by  that 
famous  question  was  comparable  to  Caliban's 
thought  that  the  favor  of  Setebos  was  as  capricious 
as  the  monster's  own  attitude  toward  the  soldier- 
crabs  which  marched  past  him  to  the  sea: 

'Let  twenty  pass,  and  stone  the  twenty-first. 
Loving  not,  hating  not,  just  choosing  so. 
'Say,  the  first  straggler  that  boasts  purple  spots 
Shall  join  the  file,  one  pincer  twisted  off; 
'Say,  this  bruised  fellow  shall  receive  a  worm, 
And  two  worms  he  whose  nippers  end  in  red; 
As  it  likes  me  each  time,  I  do:  so  he. 

Small  wonder  that  Caliban  hopes  that  such  a 
god  may  eventually  "doze,  doze,  as  good  as  die!" 
Such  conceptions  fall  by  their  own  weight  before 
the  criticism  of  life  itself.  Already  the  germs  of 
a  loftier  truth  are  present  in  Caliban's  soul  in  the 
conception  of  the  Quiet,  whose  greater  power 
must  in  the  end  overcome  the  sinister  will  of 
Setebos  and  give  room  for  all  creatures  to  live 
joyously  in  the  world. 

Caliban's  notion  that  Setebos  is  on  the  lookout 
for  those  who  give  evidence  of  any  enjoyment  or 
pleasure,  and  that  he  will  inevitably  make  them 
suffer  for  it,  has  also  found  its  counterpart  in  pop- 
ular religious  thinking,  if  not  in  formal  theology.  It 
used  to  be  quite  the  thing  to  warn  mothers  not  to 

145 


(ONFKSSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVl'.H 

lovo  llu'ir  hahios  overmuch,  lest  they  otfciul  the 
jeulous  majesty  of  the  Ahiiighty. 

Over  a|;aiiisl  Lhis  God  who  "kippers  souls  for 
sport,"  and  can  find  his  glory  m  the  damnation  of 
infants  a  span  lon.<,^  Browning  sets  his  conviction 
of  a  Love  as  boundless  as  it  is  all-powerful.  It 
is  precisely  at  this  point  that  the  supreme  necessity 
for  faith  becomes  apparent.  It  requu'cs  no  faith 
to  recognize  the  Infinite  Power  which  works  in 
creation.  Spencer  declared  the  one  unshakable 
conclusion  of  human  experience  to  be  the  insight 
that  we  are  "in  the  presence  of  an  Infinite  and 
Eternal  Energy  from  which  all  things  proceed." 
The  supreme  Wisdom  displayed  in  the  manifold 
adjustments  whereby  the  universe  is  transformed 
from  a  chaos  to  a  cosmos  is  equally  evident- — 
even  though  men  confuse  themselves  with  the 
notion  of  unconscious  intelligence.  But  that  the 
character  of  the  Infinite  is  essential  Love  is  not 
so  clear.  In  the  face  of  the  contradictions  of 
experience  Mill  concluded  that  either  God  is  not 
perfectly  good  or  he  is  not  all-powerful.  Tenny- 
son finds  that 

Nature,  red  in  tooth  and  claw 
^^'illl  ra\ine,  shrieks  against  liis  creed 

of  love.  We  shall  return  later  to  the  consideration 
of  Browning's  treatment  of  the  problem  of  evil; 
but  the  basis  of  his  life-jjhilosophy  is  his  conviction 
that,  despite  ail  seeming,  (iod  Is  good,  and  the 
life  of  man  n  rooted  in  perfect  Love. 

146 


OF  TRUTH 

In  defense  of  the  reasonableness  of  this  faith, 
he  begins  with  the  same  thought  which  we  have 
seen  in  a  more  general  form  in  the  mouth  of  Saint 
John,  who  declares,  in  "A  Death  in  the  Desert," 
that  if  God  does  not  actually  exist,  then  man  is 
the  only  God,  which  is  the  supreme  reductio  ad 
absurdum. 

In  "Saul,'*  David  sees,  with  a  sudden  burst  of 
rapture,  that  man's  feeble  and  impotent  affection 
must  be  but  the  faint  image  of  the  perfect  Love, 
else  in  this  one  point  the  creature  transcends  his 
Creator.  In  all  else  man's  powers  are  but  the 
feeble  reflection  of  the  Infinite: 

Have  I  knowledge?  Confounded  it  shrivels  at  Wis- 
dom laid  bare; 

Have  I  forethought?  how  purblind,  how  blank,  to  the 
Infinite  Care! 

Do  I  task  any  faculty  highest,  to  image  success? 

I  but  open  my  eyes — and  perfection,  no  more  and  no  less. 

In  the  kind  I  imagined,  full-fronts  me,  and  God  is 
seen  God 

In  the  star,  in  the  stone,  in  the  flesh,  in  the  soul  and 
the  clod. 

Are  we  to  suppose,  then,  in  the  face  of  this 
universal  experience,  that  an  exception  is  to  be 
made  in  this  one  field  of  love? 

Behold,  I  could  love  if  I  durst! 
But  I  sink  the  pretension  as  fearing  a  man  may  o'ertake 
God's  own  speed  in  the  one  way  of  love:  I  abstain  for 

love's  sake. 
— What,  my  soul?  see  thus  far  and  no  farther?  when 

doors  great  and  small 
Nine  and  ninety  flew  ope  at  our  touch,  should  the 
hundredth  appall? 

147 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BHOWNINCi  LOVER 

III  the  least  things  have  faith,  yet  distrust  in  the  great- 
est of  all? 

Do  I  find  K)\e  so  full  in  my  nature,  God's  ultimate  gift, 

'I'liat  I  doubt  his  own  love  can  compete  with  it?  here, 
the  parts  shift? 

Here,  the  creature  surpass  the  Oeator — the  end,  what 
Began? 

Would  I  fain  in  my  impotent  yearning  do  all  for  this 
man. 

And  dare  doubt  he  alone  shall  not  help  him,  who  yet 
alone  can? 

m 

It  is  at  this  point  that  the  poet  comes  upon  the 
fundamental  part  played  by  Christianity  in  the 
religious  history  of  mankind.  What  is  there  in 
human  experience  to  indicate  that  this  love  is  a 
reality?  'J'he  power  and  wisdom  of  the  Infinite 
are  manifest;  no  sane  man  has  ever  doubted  them: 
but  where  is  the  equally  convincing  evidence  of 
love?     The  Christian  answer  is  the  Incarnation. 

What  lacks  then  of  perfection  fit  for  God 

But  just  the  instance  which  this  talc  supplies 

Of  love  without  a  limit?     So  is  strength, 

So  is  intelligence;  let  love  be  so. 

Unlimited  in  its  self-sacrifice, 

Then  is  the  tale  true,  and  God  shows  complete. 

So  the  Pope.  It  is  the  fiishion  just  now  in  polite 
circles  to  regard  the  doctrine  of  the  Godhead  of 
Christ  as  an  invention  of  priestcraft,  grafted  on 
the  simple  religion  of  Jesus  as  a  means  of  fostering 
the  ambitions  of  worldly-minded  ecclesiastics. 
It  avails  nothing  to  reply  that  this  is  to  ignore  the 
facts  of  Christian  history;  the  opponents  of  Chris- 

148 


OF  TRUTH 

tianity  have  never  been  hampered  by  regard  for 
facts.  But  it  is  apropos  to  ask  them  where,  if 
this  tale  is  an  invention,  they  will  find  the  evidence 
for  the  goodness  of  God.  It  is  possibly  not  an 
accident  that  the  decay  of  faith  in  the  Christian 
revelation  has  been  accompanied  bj^  so  widespread 
disbelief  in  the  essential  goodness  of  creation,  and 
a  recrudescence  of  the  doctrine  of  force. 

The  statement  of  the  Christian  viewpoint  in 
"Saul"  is  peculiarly  forcible  because  the  poet  has 
put  it  in  the  form  of  a  prophecy  in  the  mouth  of 
David.  Lifted  by  the  exaltation  of  his  own 
yearning  and  unselfish  love  for  the  king  to  the 
insight  that  God's  love  must  be  yet  more  tender 
and  all-compelling,  the  youthful  psalmist  bursts 
out: 

"Would  I  suffer  for  him  that  I  love?  so  wouldst  thou 
— so  \\alt  thou! 

So  shall  crown  thee  the  topmost,  ineffablest,  utter- 
most crown — 

And  thy  love  fill  infinitude  wholly,  nor  leave  up  nor 
down 

One  spot  for  the  creature  to  stand  in!  It  is  by  no 
breath, 

Turn  of  eye,  wave  of  hand,  that  salvation  joins  issue 
with  death! 

As  thy  Love  is  discovered  almighty,  almighty  be 
proved 

Thy  power,  that  exists  with  and  for  it,  of  being  Be- 
loved ! 

He  who  did  most,  shall  bear  most;  the  strongest  shall 
stand  the  most  weak. 

'Tis  the  weakness  in  strength  that  I  cry  for!  my  flesh 
that  I  seek 

149 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A   HllOWNING  LOVER 

III    the   Godhead!     I    srek    and    find    il.     ()   Snul,    it 

shall  he 
A  Face  like  my  face  that  receives  thee;  a  Man  like 

to  me 
'IMuni  shalt  love  and  he  lov(>d  l)y  forever:  a  Hand  like 

this  hand 
Sliall  throw  open  the  gates  of  new  life  to  thee! 
See,  the  Christ  stand!" 

I  know  of  no  passage  in  all  the  literature  of 
theology  which  declares  so  eloquently  and  con- 
vincingly the  truth  which  Christianity  has  from 
the  beginning  regarded  as  the  most  central  and 
fundamental  thing  in  her  evangel.  Here  is  no 
abstract  reasoning  about  substance  and  nature, 
but  a  powerful  statement  of  the  yearning  of 
luimanity  for  understanding  and  sympathy  in 
God.  Doubtless  the  simple  l)ut  profound  truth  of 
the  gospel  lias  not  infre(juently  been  overlaid  with 
metaphysical  speculation.  More  than  once  has 
humanity  complained  of  the  theologians,  "They 
have  taken  away  my  Lord,  and  I  know  not  where 
they  have  laid  him."  The  worship  of  Mary  and 
the  saints  was  at  bottom  nothing  but  the  instinc- 
tive attempt  of  the  human  heart  to  find  humanity 
in  God  when  the  Christ  had  become  but  a  theo- 
logical abstraction,  an  uidcnown  quantity  in  a 
metaphysical  equation.  Tlie  Liiitarianism  of 
Channing  had  its  root  in  tlie  same  essential  protest 
against  a  wooden  and  mechanical  theology  in 
which  the  Son  of  man  had  disappeared  in  a  mist 
of  speculation.  Nevertheless,  the  greatest  power 
of  the  Christian  gospel  over  the  hearts  and  imagi- 

150 


OF  TRUTH 

nations  of  mankind  has  lain  in  its  conception  of 
the  suffering  Love  of  God  which  stopped  not  at 
the  supreme  sacrifice  for  his  creatures. 

A  God  who  could  do  no  more  for  men  than  to 
inspire  prophets  and  martyrs  to  die  for  them 
would  be  no  more  worthy  of  adoration  than  the 
rich  man  who  hires  a  substitute  to  fight  in  his 
stead  for  the  flag.  Nothing  less  than  a  gospel  of 
incarnation  will  ever  satisfy  the  religious  longings 
of  the  human  soul.  And  as  Dr.  McClure,  in  Ian 
Maclaren's  story,  said  of  the  faith  of  a  dying 
child,  "The  Almichty  wad  see  the  wee  lassie 
wesna  pit  tae  shame,  or  else  .  .  .  that's  no  his 
name."  A  Christian  minister  may  be  forgiven, 
therefore,  if  this  passage  in  "Saul"  stirs  his  soul 
to  deeper  depths  than  any  other  in  literature. 

It  is  the  same  truth  which  grips  the  heart  of 
"Karshish."  This  man  of  science,  traveling  in  the 
interest  of  learning,  is  writing  to  his  friend  Abib 
of  his  chance  meeting  with  Lazarus,  mysteriously 
resuscitated  from  supposed  death  by  a  learned 
leech  of  his  tribe  who  later  perished  in  a  popular 
tumult,  doubtless  because  he  was  unable  to  stop 
the  earthquake.  The  man  and  his  story  have 
made  a  strange  impression  upon  Karshish.  He 
tries  in  vain  to  shake  it  ofiF.  He  speculates  on  the 
peculiar  outlook  on  life  displayed  by  this  rude 
peasant,  as  though,  indeed,  he  had  access  to  a 
secret  hid  from  the  rest  of  mankind;  but  this  is 
not  the  thing  which  has  aft'ected  him  most  deeply. 
He  tries  to  drop  the  subject,  to  avoid  the  main 

151 


C0NFESS1()N\S  01"  A  IHUnVMNC;  T.OVEU 

issue.     He  apologizes  to  his  fiieiul  for  bothering 

liim    with    sucli    trivial    matters.     He   endeavors 

once  and  again  to  bring  his  letter  to  a  close.     But 

certain  things  Lazarus  has  said  cling  to  his  memory 

and  disturb  his  soul  to  its  depths,  until,  against 

his  will,  he  makes  a  clean  breast  of  it,  and  lays 

the  whole  matter  before  his  friend: 

"This  man  so  cured,  regards  the  curcr  then 
As,  God  forgive  mcl  who  but  God  himself, 
(^reator  and  sustainer  of  the  world, 
That  came  and  dwelt  in  flesh  on  it  awhile! 

The  very  God!  think,  Abib;  dost  thou  think.^ 
So,  the  All-Great,  were  the  All-Loving  too — 
So,  through  the  thunder  comes  a  human  voice 
Saying:  'O  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here! 
Face,  my  hands  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself! 
Thou  hast  no  jjower,  nor  niay'st  conceive  of  mine, 
But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  myself  to  love, 
And  thou  nuist  love  me  who  have  died  for  thee!" 

IV 

So  Browning  finds  at  once  the  supreme  evidence 
for  the  reality  of  the  divine  existence  and  the 
complete  manifestation  of  the  divine  character 
in  the  personality  of  Jesus  Christ.  To  a  genera- 
tion which  accepted  implicitly  the  infuIHbility  of 
the  Bible  and  the  finality  of  the  Augustinian 
theology,  Browning's  liberality  on  many  doctrinal 
points  seemed  radical  enough,  and  he  became 
the  patron  saint  of  the  revolt  against  orthodoxy. 
When  a  strict  evangelical  desired  to  bring  a 
railing  accusation  against  one  of  his  more  pro- 
gressive brethren,  he  charged  him  with  preaching 

152 


OF  TRUTH 

Browning  instead  of  the  Bible.  But  the  tide  of 
battle  has  surged  to  another  part  of  the  field,  and 
we  begin  to  see  that  Browning  was  in  reality 
defending  the  very  citadel  of  the  faith.  So  far 
from  being  an  exponent  of  Unitarianism,  his 
religious  convictions  rest  on  the  central  importance 
of  the  Incarnation  in  the  spiritual  history  of  the 
race.     Saint  John  declares  that 

"The  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ 
Accepted  by  thy  reason,  solves  for  thee 
All  questions  in  the  earth  and  out  of  it, 
And  has  so  far  advanced  thee  to  be  wise." 

Caponsacchi  sees  this  much  hope  in  his  judges: 

"You  are  Christians;  somehow,  no  one  ever  plucked 
A  rag,  even,  from  the  body  of  the  Lord, 
To  wear  and  mock  with,  but,  despite  himself. 
He  looked  the  greater  and  was  the  better." 

True,  Browning  does  not  insist  on  the  literal 
accuracy  of  the  gospel  narrative  or  the  historicity 
of  all  the  events  therein  described.  The  Pope 
questions  whether  the  story  be  absolute,  objective 
fact,  or  "truth  reverberate,  changed,  made  pass  a 
spectrum  into  mind,  the  narrow  eye": 

"So  my  heart  be  struck, 
What  care  I — by  God's  gloved  hand  or  the  bare? 
Nor  do  I  much  perplex  me  with  aught  hard. 
Dubious  in  the  transmitting  of  the  tale — 
No,  nor  with  certain  riddles  set  to  solve. 
This  life  is  training  and  a  passage;  pass — 
Still,  we  march  over  some  flat  obstacle 
We  made  give  way  before  us;  solid  truth 
In  front  of  it,  what  motion  for  the  world? 
The  moral  sense  grows  but  by  exercise." 
153 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

This  is  pure  pragnuitism.  Doubtless  it  does 
not  cover  all  the  ground,  but  it  recognizes  a  thing 
whicli  theology  has  not  always  sufficiently  con- 
sidered, namely,  the  impossibility  of  nuiking 
spiritual  truth  absolutely  dependent  upon  his- 
torical information.  When  a  truth  has  been 
borne  into  the  human  consciousness  through  an 
historical  event,  it  becomes  thereafter  an  un- 
alienable possession  of  the  soul.  It  "dies,  revives, 
goes  to  work  in  the  world,"  and  henceforth 
possesses  a  validity  independent  of  the  particular 
happening  in  time  and  space  through  which  it 
was  first  made  known.  Should  the  human  race 
survive  ten  thousand  years,  it  will  doubtless  be 
increasingly  difficult  to  verify  the  historical  truth 
of  the  four  Gospels.  But  if  the  revelation  of 
God  in  Christ  is  a  permanent  addition  to  the 
spiritual  riches  of  the  race,  then  it  must  have 
power  in  some  sort  to  verify  itself  in  conscious- 
ness, even  to  those  to  whom  the  historical  events 
seem  but  an  idle  tale.  This  frank  dismissal  of 
the  historical  problem  is,  therefore,  a  real  contri- 
bution to  the  problem  of  making  Christianity 
both  intelligible  and  credible  to  a  critical  age;  and 
Browning  becomes  one  of  those  who  have  aided 
most  in  furthering  the  transition  from  the  naive 
faith  of  the  past  to  the  assured  and  independent 
spiritual  conviction  of  the  future. 

The  significant  thing  is  that  the  poet  saw  in  the 
story  of  One  whose  love  was  the  visible  expression 
of  the  Love  of  God,  and  in  whose  death  God 

154 


OF  TRUTH 

somehow  entered  into  the  experience  of  human 
woe  and  sorrow,  the  most  powerful  and  vital 
religious  conception  that  ever  entered  into  the 
heart  of  man.  And  founding  his  whole  religious 
philosophy  on  the  conviction  that  anything  which 
answers  a  fundamental  human  need  must  be 
essentially  true,  he  thus  became  a  bulwark  of 
spiritual  faith  against  the  assaults  of  modern  im- 
personalism.  The  only  God  he  knows  is  the 
Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ;  and  the  deepest 
thing  in  God  he  finds  to  be  the  love  that  stopped 
not  at  the  ultimate  sacrifice  for  the  redemption 
of  the  race, 

The  divine  instance  of  self-sacrifice. 
That  never  ends  and  aye  begins  for  man. 

This  is  essential  Godhood.  Pompilia,  in  a  rush 
of  tenderest  mother-love  for  her  babe,  says, 

*T  never  realized  God's  birth  before, 
How  he  grew  likest  God  in  being  born"; 

and  Balaustion,  describing  the  joyous  weariness 
and  robust  tenderness  of  Herakles,  declares, 

"I  think  this  is  the  authentic  sign  and  seal 
Of  Godship,  that  it  ever  waxes  glad. 
And  more  glad,  until  gladness  blossoms,  bursts 
Into  a  rage  to  suffer  for  mankind. 
And  recommence  at  sorrow." 

If  this  religious  thinking  rests  on  concepts 
which  are  foreign  to  our  modern  philosophy,  so 
much  the  worse  for  philosophy.  The  old  debates 
over  homo-ousion  and  homoi-ousion  are  vacated  by 

155 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

our  belter  psyehology;  but  the  thing  which  the 
Niceno  Creed  undertook  to  express  remains  tlie 
one  religious  truth  which  has  power  to  make  God 
real  and  vital  to  hunum  experience,  and  thus  to 
satisfy  the  deepest  longings  of  the  soul.  In 
making  this  the  foundation  stone  in  his  art 
Browning  becomes  perhaps  the  most  significant 
spiritual  teacher  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


166 


CHAPTER  VI 
OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

The  orbit  of  human  experience  is  an  elliptical 
one,  and  the  sun  around  which  it  revolves  is  the 
idea  of  God.  The  other  focus  of  this  ellipse  is  the 
idea  of  man.  The  two  bear  a  constant  relation 
to  each  other,  and  vary  according  to  a  fixed 
ratio. 

We  have  nothing  wherewith  to  measure  our 
conception  of  the  divine  save  our  own  loftiest 
ideals;  hence  it  comes  to  pass  that  man  inevitably 
creates  God  in  his  own  image.  During  the  long 
ages  when  the  individual  had  not  yet  emerged 
from  the  human  mass,  and  life  was  subject  to  the 
capricious  tyranny  of  irresponsible  despots,  God 
was  conceived  as  the  supreme  Tyrant,  equally 
lawless  and  unmoral.  Caliban  can  know  no 
other  God  than  Setebos.  A  scientific  age  which 
has  learned  that  life  moves  in  obedience  to  dis- 
coverable laws  must  conceive  of  God  as  moved 
by  the  same  fundamental  principles  of  order. 
As  human  life  gains  in  dignity  and  power  God 
must  inevitably  cease  to  be  the  irresponsible 
Despot  and  become  the  infinite  Source  of  all 
wisdom  and  grace,  the  Fountain  of  light  and  life. 
When,  however,  the  consciousness  of  man's 
subjection    to    his    environment    overpowers    his 

157 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

sense  of  freedom  amd  responsibility,  then  the 
idea  of  God  is  re(hiced  to  thai  of  a  vast,  impersonal 
Law,  moving  blindly  toward  unforeseen  ends. 

But  the  converse  of  this  proposition  is  equally 
true.  The  idea  of  God,  once  conceived,  reacts 
upon  the  human  consciousness  to  heighten  it. 
Vague  impressions  of  life,  dimly  felt  and  half 
comprehended,  are  projected  by  the  religious  im- 
pulse upon  the  scale  of  the  infinite,  to  become 
thereby  the  determining  factors  in  the  interpre- 
tation of  life.  The  irresponsible  deities  of  the 
pagan  pantheon  were  not  consciously  the  products 
of  the  imagination,  but  were  the  instinctive  re- 
actions of  the  religious  consciousness  in  the  pres- 
ence of  actual  conditions.  Once  conceived,  they 
had  the  effect  of  emphasizing  the  factors  in 
experience  of  which  they  were  the  expression,  and 
life  became  the  more  capricious  and  impotent. 
The  God  which  mediaeval  Christianity  inherited 
from  Saint  Augustine  was  simply  a  magnified 
Roman  emperor,  the  shadow  of  the  irresponsible* 
tyranny  to  w^hich  every  human  life  was  subject 
but  the  effect  of  the  Latin  theology  was  still 
further  to  depress  the  human  consciousness. 
Man  was  conceived  as  totally  depraved,  as 
spiritually  impotent,  a  worm  of  the  dust,  deserving 
nothing  but  eternal  misery.  Life  as  a  whole  was 
a  failure,  to  be  cast  as  rubbish  to  the  void;  and  only 
a  few  might  hope  to  be  chosen  by  divine  caprice 
to  be  the  nucleus  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new 
earth. 

158 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  Reformation  in 
religion  followed  the  Renaissance  in  life.  The 
growing  sense  of  the  worth  and  dignity  of  life 
made  the  old  theology  untenable.  The  individual 
began  to  emerge  and  to  become  conscious  of  his 
individual  right  and  responsibility.  The  first 
effect  was  to  heighten  the  individuality  of  God, 
so  to  speak;  the  sense  of  the  absoluteness  of  the 
divine  sovereignty.  But  the  God  of  Calvinism 
was  no  longer  pure  Irresponsibility.  The  in- 
fluence of  the  older  thinking  still  persisted,  but 
God  was  conceived  essentially  as  infinite  Right- 
eousness and  Justice  and  Truth,  and  he  who 
feared  God  no  longer  feared  the  face  of  man. 
The  result  was  to  increase  the  independence  of 
the  individual,  and  Calvinism  became  the  re- 
ligion of  democracy.  No  earthly  king  could 
tyrannize  over  the  subjects  of  the  Throne  of 
Heaven. 

At  the  same  time  the  sternness  and  unbending 
justice  of  God  were  reflected  in  the  character 
of  the  Puritans,  with  their  harsh,  unlovely  con- 
ceptions of  life  and  their  rigid  and  uncharitable 
religion. 

The  inevitable  correlation  between  these  two 
factors  in  human  thinking  thus  becomes  ap- 
parent. They  vary  in  a  constant  ratio.  Progress 
comes  sometimes  from  one  side  and  sometimes 
from  the  other.  A  Prophet  arises  with  a  new 
conception  of  God,  and  old  injustices  and  cor- 
ruptions in  human  civilization  are  doomed.     A 

159 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

refornuT  ;ii)i)cars  in  the  political  world,  or  new 
forces  are  broii^^iil  to  hear  on  society  through 
invention  and  tliscovery,  and  old  theologies  grow 
too  petty  and  cramped  for  the  expanding  soul 
of  man. 

The  recognition  of  this  relation  between  re- 
ligious thinking  and  human  experience  does  not 
by  any  means  invalidate  either  religion  or  reve- 
lation. It  is  nothing  more  than  the  frank  recog- 
nition that  thought  is  a  social  product,  that 
ideas  can  only  be  interpreted  through  experience 
and  cannot  arise  until  experience  has  prepared 
the  way  for  them.  Revelation  itself  is  conditioned 
upon  the  receptive  power  of  the  human  mind, 
and  the  times  of  ignorance  God  winks  at. 

That  when  once  spiritual  conceptions  have 
emerged  they  exert  an  immeasurable  influence 
upon  life  in  reality  bears  incontrovertible  witness 
to  their  essential  truth.  The  ideas  of  God  and 
man  are  as  inseparable  as  the  two  ends  of  a 
stick.  They  react  on  each  other  and  cannot 
be  dissociated.  Not  until  a  factor  in  human 
experience  has  been  erected  into  a  fundamental 
principle  of  philosophy  does  it  attain  its  highest 
degree  of  usefulness  and  power. 

But  when  it  has  been  so  wrought  into  our 
deepest  thinking  and  has  reacted  upon  our  con- 
ceptions of  daily  life  and  its  meaning,  then  its 
limitations  likewise  become  apparent,  and  it 
tyrannizes  over  us  until  it  has  been  purified  and 
corrected  by  the  discovery  of  yet  other  phases 

160 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

of  truth.  Thus  Puritanism  crystaHized  into  a 
hard  and  mechanical  type  of  religious  Pharisaism, 
and  the  spiritual  heroism  in  which  it  had  its 
root  was  lost  in  the  harsh  bitterness  of  its  despotic 
narrowness. 

The  working  of  this  principle  of  the  inevitable 
correlation  between  our  conception  of  the  ulti- 
mate Reality  and  our  interpretation  of  human 
life  may  be  seen  in  the  shallow  and  mechanical 
thinking   of   which   we  have   complained   in   the 
literature   of   the   present   day,    and    which   has 
its  root  in  the  mechanical  philosophy  of  modern 
science.     Scientific  writers  are  fond  of  accusing 
the   theologians   of   "anthropomorphism,"   which 
they  regard  as  the  root  vice  of  religious  thinking, 
and  from  which  they  imagine  themselves  to  be 
entirely  free.    As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  philosophy 
of  Haeckel  is  nothing  but  the  projection  of  the 
idea  of  law  which  has  been  found  so  useful  in 
correlating    the    results    of    scientific    induction. 
In  itself  it  is  as  mystical  and  quite  as  anthro- 
pomorphic  as   the  religious   idea   of   love.     The 
human  mind  is  given  to  systematizing  its  expe- 
rience, to  grouping  facts  together  for  convenience 
in  handling  them.    Hence  arises  the  idea  of  laws, 
in  accordance  with  which  the  facts  hang  together 
in  such  convenient  groups.     Modern  science  has 
simply    extended    this    principle    to    include    all 
experience,   even   such   as   has   thus   far   proved 
intractable  to  scientific  interpretation. 

Among  the  generalizations  of  recent  science, 
161 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

oiu>  whic'li  lias  i)r()vo(l  in  soino  respects  most  useful 
is  lliat  whicli  relates  lo  tlie  influence  of  environ- 
ment upon  the  organism.  This  fits  in  with  so 
much  in  the  experience  of  mankind  that  it  has 
captured  the  inuigination  of  our  time.  This  is 
the  one  among  all  the  factors  in  human  life 
which  to-day  is  erected  into  the  governing  prin- 
ciple of  reality.  Everything  which  seems  to  con- 
tradict it  is  either  ignored  or  explicitly  de- 
nied. 

To  the  lay  mind  it  would  seem  that  the  oppo- 
site principle  of  the  influence  of  the  organism 
upon  its  environment  is  quite  as  universal  in  its 
operation  and  quite  as  significant  for  the  inter- 
pretation of  experience,  but  it  does  not  exist  for 
the  cock-sure  scientist.  It  is  too  intractable  to 
the  idea  of  law  to  fit  in  with  the  other  concep- 
tions upon  which  the  scientific  interpretation 
rests,  so  he  will  have  none  of  it. 

The  underived  remainder  in  the  human  per- 
sonality whicli  lies  at  the  basis  of  all  progress, 
the  power  whereby  man  reacts  upon  his  environ- 
ment to  transform  it,  and  which  is  the  most 
central  fact  in  human  experience,  has  been  flatly 
denied.  The  projection  of  the  opposite  prin- 
ciple upon  the  scale  of  the  universal  has  become 
the  corner  stone  of  scientific  thinking.  The  free 
Creative  Power  which  earlier  ages  took  for  granted 
has  thus  disappeared,  and  in  its  stead  we  have 
Nature,  which  is  only  another  name  for  the  to- 
tality of  Environment,  working  all  things  accord- 

162 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

ing  to  the  inevitableness  of  its  mechanical  ne- 
cessity. 

This  mechanical  system  of  metaphysics  has 
reacted  on  our  understanding  of  human  nature 
as  inevitably  as  did  the  Calvinistic  theology. 
The  doctrine  of  foreordination,  which  threw  its 
baleful  influence  athwart  the  lives  of  the  Puritans, 
was  as  nothing  beside  the  deterministic  psy- 
chology of  the  past  twenty  years.  The  earth 
has  been  peopled  with  automatic  puppets  who 
when  the  strings  are  properly  worked  outdo  Mr. 
Punch  himself  in  vigor  of  speech  and  action, 
but  in  whom  there  is  not  an  emotion  nor  an 
aspiration  which  is  not  the  outcome  of  "motor 
excitations  in  the  ganglia."  Love,  hate,  am- 
bition, purpose,  are  secreted,  like  the  bile  or 
the  pancreatic  juice.  Truth  there  is  none.  Sin 
and  virtue  have  alike  disappeared.  Life  itself 
is  reduced  to  chemical  reactions  and  galvanic 
spasms,  and  the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or 
land  to  a  phosphorescent  glimmer  which  there 
are  none  truly  left  to  observe. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  already  there  is  a 
reaction  in  the  scientific  world  from  this  extreme 
position,  though  it  will  doubtless  be  twenty  years 
before  the  literary  world  will  find  it  out.  Psy- 
chologists are  not  so  sure  as  they  were  even 
five  years  since  that  the  Ego  can  be  reduced  to 
the  "stream  of  consciousness."  They  are  redis- 
covering the  soul.  Biology  is  losing  its  power 
to  tyrannize  over  the  world  of  thought,  and  there 

163 


CONB^ESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

are  signs  of  a  new  daj'  when  humanity  may  come 
again  to  its  own. 

The  "philosophy"  of  Browning  centers  inev- 
itably around  these  two  poles  of  all  serious  think- 
ing. His  idea  of  God  grows  out  of  his  concep- 
tion of  humanity.  It  is  the  necessary  ground  and 
guaranty  of  that  dignity  and  worth  which  the 
poet  finds  in  human  nature,  of  the  destiny  which 
alone  can  satisfy  the  longings  of  the  human 
spirit.  The  chief  interest  of  the  poet  is  not  in 
the  divine  but  in  the  human  side  of  this  equation. 
He  has  been  taxed  with  undue  interest  in  meta- 
physical speculation,  when,  in  fact,  metaphysics 
has  no  interest  for  him  except  as  it  gives  him 
breathing  room,  as  it  affords  an  adequate  back- 
ground for  the  varied  and  entrancing  interest 
of  the  human  drama  plaj'ed  out  before  his  eyes. 

The  extent  and  variety  of  this  human  interest 
in  Browning  we  have  seen.  It  is  worth  while 
to  analyze  the  conception  of  human  life  in  which 
it  finds  expression  and  justification.  To  go  back 
to  a  figure  which  we  have  employed  before:  one 
end  of  the  poet's  bridge  rests  on  his  conception 
of  the  wisdom  and  loving  purpose  of  God;  the 
other  rests  on  the  freedom  and  essential  divinity 
of  man,  as  evidenced  by  his  capacity  for  love, 
by  his  progress  toward  the  ideal  to  which  he 
forever  aspires,  and  supremely  by  the  destiny 
which  religious  faith  demands  and  which  alone 
can  complete  and  satisfy  the  fragmentary  ex- 
perience of  the  earthly  years. 

164 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 


To  begin  with,  Browning  insists  on  the  essen- 
tial divinity  of  human  nature.  Having  acknowl- 
edged that  his  conception  of  God  is  derived  from 
his  interpretation  of  life,  this  seems  like  reasoning 
in  a  circle.  In  fact,  it  is  nothing  more  than  that 
which  we  have  seen  to  be  characteristic  of  all 
human  experience,  the  return  of  a  philosophical 
conception  upon  the  life  in  which  it  has  its  root, 
to  heighten  and  perfect  it.  Browning  believes 
in  God  because  he  finds  man  godlike.  God 
forthwith  becomes  the  source  and  ground  of  the 
loftiest  human  characteristics  and  the  supreme 
reason  for  faith  in  the  outcome  of  life.  "Rabbi 
Ben  Ezra"  finds  man, 

for  aye  removed 
From  the  developed  brute;  a  God  though  in  the  germ. 

Nearer  we  hold  of  God 

Who  gives,  than  of  his  tribes  that  take,  I  must  believe. 

The  poem  was  published  in  1865,  six  years 
after  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  and  antedates 
The  Descent  of  Man  by  several  years.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  it  echoes  the  fierce  controversies 
to  which  Darwin's  epoch-making  work  gave  rise. 
The  poet  takes  the  ground  that  man  is  at  once 
the  crowning  glory  of  the  animal  creation  and 
the  beginning  of  a  spiritual  kingdom.  This  is 
his  answer  to  the  philosophy  which  reduces  hu- 
manity to  the  level  of  its  brute  ancestry. 

165 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

This,  by  the  way,  is  the  root  error  of  the  biolog- 
ical school  of  thought.  Taking  his  cue  from 
Herbert  Spencer,  the  true  modernist  can  never 
rise  above  the  study  of  origins.  If  consciousness 
is  foreshadowed  in  the  cell-affinities  of  the  physical 
organism,  then  the  mind  is  nothing  but  a  chem- 
ical reaction.  If  religion  had  its  rise  in  ghost 
worship,  then  it  can  never  be  anything  more 
than  crude  superstition.  If  the  moral  intuitions 
grew  out  of,  or  were  developed  by,  the  experience 
of  primitive  tribes,  then  morality  is  nothing  more 
than  expediency.  If  love  has  its  root  in  sex- 
instinct,  then  it  is  sentimental  balderdash  to  find 
in  it  anything  loftier  than  physical  passion.  The 
most  recent  attempts  to  construct  a  psychology 
of  religion  can  find  nothing  but  sex-emotion  at 
the  basis  of  the  loftiest  spiritual  impulses. 

Bosh!  It  is  by  its  fruit,  not  its  roots,  that  a 
tree  is  judged.  Not  origins,  but  ends,  constitute 
the  most  important  study  for  the  human  mind. 
Such  speculations  as  I  have  cited  are  nothing 
but  subtlety  run  mad.  An  oak  tree  is  not  an 
acorn,  a  man  is  other  than  a  newborn  babe,  and 
some  philosophers  at  least  are  greater  than  apes. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  Browning  himself  antici- 
pated the  essential  truth  in  Darwin's  doctrine. 
"Paracelsus"  was  published  in  1835,  nearly  a 
quarter  of  a  century  before  the  Origin  of  Species. 
In  it  we  have  such  a  spiritual  interpretation  of 
the  doctrine  of  evolution  as  might  have  been 
furnished  by  a  liberal   theologian   of  the  fin  de 

166 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

siecle.    Paracelsus  finds  one  thought  and  purpose 
everywhere.     God 

dwells  in  all. 
From  life's  minute  beginnings,  up  at  last 
To  man — the  consummation  of  this  scheme 
Of  being,  the  completion  of  this  sphere 
Of  Hfe.  ...  All  tended  to  mankind. 
And,  man  produced,  all  has  its  end  thus  far: 
But  in  completed  man  begins  anew 
A  tendency  to  God. 

We  shall  return  to  this  thought  again  from 
another  angle  when  we  come  to  speak  of  Brown- 
ing's conception  of  human  progress.  Here  the 
important  thing  to  note  is  that  the  poet  goes 
behind  the  natural  origin  of  humanity  to  find 
its  essential  root  in  the  Power  that  lies  behind 
the  natural  world — in  the  words  of  the  Pope, 
"What  I  call  God  and  fools  call  Nature."  Man 
is,  indeed,  a  part  of  nature,  but  he  is  more  than 
that.  He  stands  a  handsbreadth  removed  from 
the  rest  of  creation,  that  he  may  return  to  God 
"His  creation's  approval  or  censure." 

Man  therefore  stands  on  his  own  stock 

Of  love  and  power  as  a  pin-point  rock; 

And,  looking  to  God  who  ordained  divorce 

Of  the  rock  from  his  boundless  continent, 

Sees,  in  his  power  made  evident. 

Only  excess  by  a  millionfold 

O'er  the  power  God  gave  man  in  the  mold. 

Who  speaks  of  man,  then,  must  not  sever 
Man's  very  element  from  man, 
Saying,  "But  all  is  God's" — whose  plan 
Was  to  create  man  and  then  leave  him 

167 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Able,  his  own  word  saitli,  to  grieve  him. 

But  al)le  to  glorify  him  too. 

As  a  mere  machine  could  never  do, 

That  j)rayed  or  j)raiscd,  all  unaware 

Of  its  fitness  for  aught  but  i)raise  or  prayer, 

Made  perfect  as  a  thing  of  course. 

— ("Christmas  Eve.") 

This  insistence  that  man  is  essentially  some- 
thing more  than  result,  that  he  is  himself  a  cause, 
and  so  far  free,  was  no  doubt  directed  in  large 
measure  at  the  Calvinistic  theology,  whose  shadow 
darkened  the  lives  of  Macaulay  and  Ruskin  and 
Carlyle.  But  it  serves  no  less  in  our  own  day  as 
a  challenge  to  the  mechanical  doctrines  of  recent 
science.  Aut  libertas  aut  nulliis.  Either  religion 
is  right  in  its  insistence  on  the  freedom  of  the 
mind  and  soul  to  work  out  their  own  destiny 
in  the  light  of  the  loftiest  ideals  which  it  hath 
entered  into  the  heart  of  man  to  conceive,  or 
science  no  less  than  faith  is  doomed,  for  the 
conception  of  truth  becomes  as  meaningless  as 
that  of  right  and  duty,  and  the  whole  conscious 
experience  of  the  race  is  reduced  to  a  phantastic 
chaos.  "Love,  hope,  fear,  faith,  these  make 
humanity." 

Arnold  and  Clough  might  roam  forever  in  the 
darkness,  seeking  light  and  moaning  the  decay 
of  faith.  Tennyson  might  "grope,  and  gather 
dust  and  chaff."  The  younger  generation  which 
has  succeeded  may  seek  to  content  itself  with 
a  world  from  which  spiritual  faith  has  dis- 
appeared and  to  which  it  has  become  meaningless. 

168 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

But  Browning  has  never  a  moment's  misgiving. 
With  serene  and  cheerful  confidence  he  takes 
his  stand  upon  the  essential  worth  of  humanity's 
loftier  spiritual  traits  and  bids  defiance  to  doubt 
and  fear. 

II 

The  first  element  in  the  divinity  of  human 
nature,  the  first  evidence  of  its  essential  freedom, 
the  poet  finds  in  the  capacity  for  love.  This 
is  of  the  very  essence  of  Godhood, 

For  the  loving  worm  within  its  clod 
Were  diviner  than  a  loveless  God 
Amid  his  worlds,  I  will  dare  to  say. 

Therefore  a  humanity  capable  of  love  is  akin 
to  God,  and  the  whole  purpose  of  human  existence 
is  "to  glorify  God  and  enjoy  him  forever."  And 
love  is,  indeed,  as  central  and  fundamental  in  the 
life  of  man  as  it  is  in  the  character  of  God. 

There  is  no  good  of  life  but  love — but  love! 
What  else  looks  good  is  some  shade  flung  from  love; 
Love  gilds  it,  gives  it  worth.     Be  warned  by  me. 
Never  you  cheat  yourself  one  instant!     Love, 
Give  love,  ask  only  love,  and  leave  the  rest! 

—("In  a  Balcony.") 

For  Hfe,  with  all  it  yields  of  joy  and  woe. 
And  hope  and  fear — believe  the  aged  friend — 
Is  just  our  chance  o'  the  prize  of  learning  love. 
How  love  might  be,  hath  been,  indeed,  and  is; 
And  that  we  hold  thenceforth  to  the  uttermost 
Such  prize,  despite  the  envy  of  the  world. 
And  having  gained  truth,  keep  truth:  that  is  all. 
—("A  Death  in  the  Desert.") 

169 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Paul  Elmer  More  objects  that  as  often  as  not 
it  is  mere  blind  human  passion  which  Browning 
celebrates  as  a  saving  spiritual  grace,  and  whose 
dawning  rapture  he  likens  to  that  new  birth 
which  transforms  the  soul — whence  Mr.  More 
concludes  that  the  poet  "dresses  a  worldly  and 
easy  philosophy  in  the  forms  of  spiritual  faith 
and  so  deceives  the  troubled  seekers  after  the 
higher  life." 

I  confess  my  mental  faculties  are  paralyzed 
by  such  criticism  as  this.  Can  it  be  that  all  the 
earnest  and  spiritually-minded  souls  who  have 
found  inspiration  in  Browning  have  been  misled, 
and  that  they  must  be  set  right  by  the  literary 
critic.'^  Mr.  More  confesses  that  he  has  no  idea 
what  the  mystical  experience  of  the  new  birth 
may  be,  but  he  is  quite  certain  it  must  be  other 
and  more  significant  than  the  birth  of  human 
passion  with  which  the  poet  seems  to  identify  it. 

But  is  it  so  certain  that  Browning  reduces 
the  spiritual  life  to  human  love?  There  can  be 
no  doubt  that  his  attitude  toward  such  love  is 
quite  different  from  that  of  mediaeval  Cathol- 
icism. He  does  not  regard  it  as  a  snare  of  the 
soul,  but,  rather,  as  a  gift  of  God.  But  it  would 
be  more  nearly  correct  to  say  that  he  exalts 
love  to  the  plane  of  a  spiritual  impulse  than  that 
he  reduces  spiritual  experience  to  the  level  of 
human  passion.  His  whole  treatment  of  love 
is  a  protest  against  the  essential  animalism  of 
that  view  of  life  which  can  see  nothing  loftier 

170 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

in  the  love  of  a  man  for  a  woman  than  sheer 
physical  instinct.  Love,  to  Browning,  meant 
something  quite  different  from  what  it  meant 
to  Swinburne  or  Oscar  Wilde.  There  is  nothing 
ethereal  about  it.  He  deals  quite  frankly  and 
sympathetically  with  all  its  phases.  He  knows 
the  love  of  the  wronged  girl  in  "The  Confessional," 
the  guilty  passion  of  Ottima  and  Sebald,  no  less 
than  the  the  lofty  purity  of  "James  Lee's  Wife," 
of  "Any  Wife  to  Any  Husband,"  of  Pompilia  and 
Caponsacchi.  Indeed,  it  is  only  fair  to  say  that 
he  undertakes  to  find  spiritual  significance  even 
in  love  which  has  scarcely  risen  above  the 
physical.  He  has  puzzled  his  most  ardent  de- 
votees by  his  apparent  defense  of  sexual  license 
in  "Fifine  at  the  Fair."  But  all  this  is  precisely 
because  he  is  so  sure  that  the  physical  basis  of 
human  love  is  but  the  starting  point,  and  that 
in  its  inmost  essence  it  is  a  spiritual  experience, 
not  altogether  remote  from  that  creative  impulse 
in  which  the  Divine  Love  finds  expression. 

It  is  for  this  reason  that  he  so  often  couples 
it  with  the  dawn  of  spiritual  insight,  as  in  the 
case  of  Caponsacchi.  Herein,  despite  Mr.  More, 
he  has  anticipated  modern  psychology.  But  he 
has  seen  more  deeply  than  the  psychologists, 
who  confound  the  spiritual  vision  with  the  human 
instinct  in  which  it  had  its  birth.  Browning 
makes  love  the  force  which  quickens  the  soul 
and  leaves  it  open  to  those  higher  influences 
from    the    divine    which    transcend    all    human 

171 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

power  and  lift  man  to  tlie  loftiest  levels  of  spir- 
itual insiglit.  Other  forces  in  human  life  may 
serve  the  same  end.  Tiiere  are  spiritual  awaken- 
ings whose  source  is  remote  from  the  sex  im- 
pulse, as  there  are  sins  which  lie  outside  the 
realm  of  sex  relations.  The  spiritual  life  itself 
is  on  quite  another  plane  than  that  of  simple 
human  emotion,  and  love  must  pass  over  into 
something  quite  different  before  one  can  be  said 
to  have  entered  the  spiritual  realm. 

No  one  knew  this  better  than  Browning  him- 
self. To  charge  him  with  identifying  the  spiritual 
life  with  human  passion  is  to  ignore  whole  masses 
of  his  most  significant  work.  But  love,  to  Brown- 
ing, is  the  very  flower  of  human  experience,  the 
purest  and  best  thing  in  life,  next  to  the  love 
of  the  divine.  If  one  can  be  true  to  this  human 
impulse,  if  he  love  loyally  and  without  reserve, 
his  love  becomes  an  instrument  of  God  whereby 
a  way  is  opened  for  the  understanding  of  spiritual 
things.  If  a  man  prove  false  to  his  love,  he  has 
betrayed  the  best  thing  in  his  manhood,  which 
is  to  lose  his  soul. 

Thus  it  comes  to  pass  that  love,  rightly  taken, 
becomes  an  instrument  of  spiritual  enlightenment. 
To  understand  this  is  at  once  to  dignify  human 
love  and  to  assert  the  essential  kinship  between 
the  human  and  the  divine.  It  is  at  bottom  a 
protest  against  the  philosophy  of  dirt  which 
reduces  all  human  experience  to  the  level  of 
the  brute.    So  far  from  being  a  denial  of  spiritual 

172 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

birth,  it  is  a  reminder  that  such  rebirths,  in 
their  deepest  nature  spiritual,  are  a  part  of  com- 
mon human  experience.  That  there  may  be  one 
such  transformation  of  the  soul's  inmost  life 
which  transcends  all  other  events  in  the  history 
of  spiritual  progress  is  not  denied.  Indeed,  it 
is  to  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  a  similarly 
unique  and  transcendent  experience  comes  to  the 
heart  in  the  birth  of  a  great  love.  The  poet  does 
not  identify  the  two  experiences,  but  he  points 
out  that  the  one  may  be  the  instrument  of  the 
other.  It  is  not  given  to  every  man  to  love 
supremely.  Neither  is  it  given  to  every  man 
to  pass  through  a  vivid  and  striking  spiritual 
experience.  But  to  every  man  love  comes  in 
some  fashion,  and  if  he  proves  himself  worthy 
of  it,  it  becomes  to  him  a  means  of  grace,  purify- 
ing his  soul  and  sweetening  his  whole  life.  And 
so  to  every  man  there  may  come  the  softening 
and  purifying  influences  of  the  Divine  Spirit, 
lifting  him  above  the  things  that  are  of  the  earth 
earthy.  But  this  divine  grace  can  come  only 
as  he  proves  obedient  to  such  spiritual  impulses 
as  are  ministered  to  the  soul  through  the  com- 
mon life. 

Current  philosophy  does  not  believe  in  the 
transformation  of  the  soul  through  the  birth  of 
spiritual  insight.  Browning  insists  that  a  man 
cannot  truly  love  a  woman  without  catching 
glimpses  of  a  life  on  a  higher  level,  where  spiritual 
values  rule.    He  bids  us  look  on  the  world  about 

173 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

us  witli  upon  oyos,  iind  see  that  there  are  new 
soul-births,  whellicr  a  inechaiiicul  j)liilosopljy  Hkes 
it  or  not.  Though  they  take  phicc  on  the  i)huie 
of  human  passion,  they  are  not  without  spiritual 
significance.  Browning  could  never  have  written 
"The  Dark  Flower,"  where  one  passion  after 
another  sears  the  heart  with  its  flame,  leaving 
the  man  no  wiser  or  stronger  or  sweeter  than 
it  found  him.  Browning  saw  more  deeply  into 
human  life  than  that.  He  knew  that  such  ex- 
periences utterly  transform  a  man  for  better  or 
worse;  that  they  are  soul-revealing  crises,  whence 
a  man  emerges  saved  or  lost,  according  as  he 
has  made  "the  terrible  choice." 

Oh  we're  sunk  enough  here,  God  knows! 

But  not  quite  so  sunk  that  moments, 
Sure  though  seldom,  are  denied  us. 

When  the  spirit's  true  endowments 
Stand  out  plainly  from  its  false  ones, 

And  apprise  it  if  pursuing 
Or  the  right  way  or  the  wrong  way. 

To  its  triumph  or  undoing. 

There  are  flashes  struck  from  midnights. 

There  are  fire-flames  noondays  kindle. 
Whereby  piled-up  honors  perish, 

Whereby  swollen  ambitions  dwindle, 
WTiile  just  this  or  that  poor  impulse. 

Which  for  once  had  play  unstifled. 
Seems  the  sole  work  of  a  lifetime, 

That  away  the  rest  have  trifled. 

— ("Cristina.") 

That  human  love  may  prove  the  instrument 
of  such  a  spiritual  awakening  any  man  who  will 

174 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

come  out  of  the  closet  and  look  at  real  life  with 
his  eyes  open  must  know.  That  human  passion 
quite  as  often  proves  the  soul's  undoing  and 
leads  to  irretrievable  ruin  and  loss  is  equally 
evident.  This  is  only  to  say  that  all  the  deeper 
experiences  of  life  are  fraught  with  meaning, 
and  that  the  spiritual  world  impinges  at  every 
point  upon  the  common  life  of  men. 

It  is  the  glory  of  Browning  as  the  poet  of  hu- 
man love  that  no  man  has  ever  written  of  human 
passion  with  so  broad  a  sympathy,  so  lofty  an 
ideal  of  its  spiritual  power,  with  so  great  delicacy, 
such  passionate  tenderness.  Tennyson  is  more 
virginal,  Browning  more  human.  To  his  mind, 
however,  love  is  worlds  removed  from  sublimated 
animalism;  it  is  more  nearly  akin  to  the  divine 
love. 

This  interpretation  of  human  experience  does 
not,  of  course,  cover  all  the  ground  of  the  spiritual 
life,  nor  did  the  poet  so  intend  it;  but  it  is  infinitely 
more  wholesome  and  more  true  than  the  refined 
brutality  of  current  literature.  It  reveals  a 
sounder  insight  into  essential  values.  Love  in 
the  poet's  own  experience  brought  him  near  to 
the  gates  of  heaven — he  would  go  to  the  old 
Marylebone  church  where  they  were  wed  and 
kiss  the  stone  steps  where  his  Love's  foot  fell — 
and  he  has  challenged  the  world  with  an  ideal 
of  love  which  must  forever  rebuke  the  shallow 
sentiment  and  easy  self-indulgence  of  men;  and 
point  to  an  interpretation  of  life  which  values 

175 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

liiinianity  not  by  the  brute  out  of  which  it  has 
emerged,  but  by  the  God  into  which  the  Creator 
will  have  it  develop  through  all  the  experiences 
of  life. 

Lovers,  therefore,  will  go  back  to  "The  Last 
Ride  Together,"  to  "Love  Among  the  Ruins,"  to 
"Rudel,"  and  "Cristina,"  and  "Evelyn  Hope," 
to  "Love  in  a  Life"  and  "Life  in  a  Love,"  to  the 
story  of  Pompilia  and  her  "soldier-saint,"  and, 
above  all,  to  "By  the  Fireside"  and  "One  Word 
More,"  to  find  an  interpretation  of  their  love 
more  completely  satisfying  than  anything  else  in 
literature  outside  of  Shakespeare.  And  the  spir- 
itually-minded will  continue  to  read  "Abt  Vogler" 
and  "Rabbi  Ben  Ezra"  and  "A  Death  in  the 
Desert,"  "Karshish"  and  "Cleon"  and  "The 
Pope,"  to  say  nothing  of  all  the  poems  of  life 
and  character  which  have  thrown  so  vivid  a  light 
on  the  working  of  human  motives  and  impulses, 
undisturbed  by  the  fear  that  the  poet  will  prove 
in  all  these  things  a  "false  prophet."  whose  easy- 
going optimism  has  "dressed  a  worldly  philosophy 
in  the  forms  of  spiritual  faith." 

Ill 

It  would  not  be  fair,  however,  wholly  to  identify 
the  love  which  Browning  finds  to  be  the  supreme 
measure  of  life  with  the  love  of  man  and  woman. 
This  universal  passion,  at  once  so  lofty  and  so 
human,  tends  continually  to  pass  over  into  the 

176 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

broader  spiritual  grace  of  which  it  is  the  type. 
In  such  a  poem  as  "Life  in  a  Love"  no  thought- 
ful reader  can  fail  to  feel  that  love  has  become 
the  symbol  of  that  ever-growing,  ever-vanishing 
Ideal  which  is  the  flying  goal  of  life's  deepest 
endeavor. 

So  in  that  poignant  reference  to  Dante  in  "One 
Word  More," 

Dante,  who  loved  well  because  he  hated, 
Hated  wickedness  that  hinders  loving, 

the  poet  is  half-unconsciously  moved  by  the 
spirit  of  Dante  himself,  whose  love  for  the  woman 
Beatrice  was  inseparable  from  his  passionate  de- 
votion to  the  spiritual  ideal  of  which  she  became 
the  type. 

Love,  for  Browning,  is  the  supreme  lesson  of 
life.  In  the  passage  which  I  have  quoted  from 
"In  a  Balcony,"  the  Queen  is  led  by  her  sudden 
radiant  vision  of  human  love  to  understand  the 
larger  significance  of  the  spirit  of  love,  and  when 
she  speaks,  her  words  bear  witness  not  only  to 
the  supreme  place  of  human  passion  in  life,  but 
no  less  to  the  ultimate  worth  of  ethical  love,  the 
spirit  of  devotion  and  service.  When  Saint  John 
speaks,  in  "A  Death  in  the  Desert,"  it  is  not 
human  affection  which  he  has  in  mind  at  all, 
but  that  supreme  spiritual  passion  which  Saint 
Paul  celebrates  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  First 
Corinthians.  If  it  be  true  that  there  are  not  a 
great  number  of  specific  passages  in  which  Brown- 

177 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

ing  inculcates  lliis  spiritual  grace,  it  is  equally 
true  that  it  is  taken  for  granted  throughout  his 
work  as  the  only  adecjuale  ethical  motive  and 
the  supreme  fulfillnienl  of  life.  It  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  the  object  of  "Paracelsus,"  the 
work  in  whicli  the  young  poet  poured  out  his 
boy  heart,  is  to  set  forth  the  utter  failure  of  a 
life  moved  by  any  lesser  spirit.  Not  until  he  has 
learned  the  lesson  of  love  as  a  spiritual  grace 
does  Paracelsus  attain.  He  explains  his  own 
earlier  failure  on  this  ground: 

"In  my  own  heart  love  had  not  been  made  wise 
To  trace  love's  faint  beginnings  in  mankind, 
To  know  even  hate  is  but  a  mask  of  love's. 
To  see  a  good  in  evil,  and  a  hope 
In  ill  success;  to  sympathize,  be  proud 
Of  their  half-reasons,  faint  aspirings,  dim 
Struggles  for  truth,  their  poorest  fallacies. 
Their  prejudice  and  fears  and  cares  and  doubts; 
All  with  a  touch  of  nobleness,  despite 
Their  error,  upward  tending  all  though  weak, 
Like  plants  in  mines  which  never  saw  the  sun, 
But  dream  of  him  and  guess  where  he  may  be. 
And  do  their  best  to  climb  and  get  to  him." 

"The  Ring  and  The  Book,"  the  colossal  epic 
which  embodies  the  ripe  wisdom  of  the  poet's 
maturity,  teaches  many  varied  lessons,  but  the 
warp  into  which  this  many-colored  pattern  is 
woven  is  the  essential  Christian  ethic  of  love  and 
service.  The  great-hearted  charity  of  the  Pope  is 
the  expression  of  it;  the  patience  of  Pompilia  is  the 
outcome  of  it;  the  sordidness  and  greed  of  Guide 
are  thrown  into  relief  upon  this  background. 

178 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

Perhaps  one  of  the  finest  expressions  of  this 
ideal  in  all  Browning's  poetry  is  to  be  found  in 
his  transcriptions  from  Euripides — introduced 
with  Mrs.  Browning's  tribute: 

Our  Euripides  the  Human 

With  his  droppings  of  warm  tears, 

And  his  touches  of  things  common 
Till  they  rose  to  touch  the  spheres. 

The  protagonist  of  both  these  poems  is  Herakles, 
the  Greek  Christ,  the  incarnation  of  the  loving- 
kindness  of  God.  "Gladness  go  with  thee,  Helper 
of  our  world!"  cries  Balaustion,  as  the  god  sets 
forth  on  his  mission  to  wrestle  with  death  for 
the  shade  of  Alkestis;  and  the  spirit  that  breathes 
through  both  poems  is  the  recognition  of  self- 
sacrificing  love  as  at  once  the  highest  expression 
of  godhood  and  the  whole  duty  of  man. 

IV 

To  the  intense  social  consciousness  of  the 
present  age  it  seems  almost  incomprehensible  that 
a  poet  with  Browning's  all-embracing  human 
sympathies  should  have  seemed  so  entirely  un- 
conscious of  social  problems.  It  cannot  be  said 
that  these  problems  had  not  emerged,  for  Brown- 
ing was  of  the  generation  that  produced  Maurice 
and  Kingsley  and  William  Morris,  and  the  publi- 
cation of  "Fors  Clavigera"  was  begun  only  three 
years  after  "The  Ring  and  The  Book."  Even 
Mrs.  Browning  displayed  a  keener  interest  in 
these  matters  than  her  husband:  witness   "The 

179 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Cry  of  the  Children,"  and  "Aurora  Leigh"  itself. 
It  must  not  be  forfj^otten,  however,  that  Browning 
was  a  eonsistent  Liberal,  that  he  wrote  "The 
Lost  Leader"  because  of  Wordsworth's  defection 
in  1832,  and  that  he  displayed  the  warmest 
sympathy  with  the  struggles  of  his  beloved  Italy 
against  Austrian  tyranny. 

But  Browning  was  both  by  temperament 
and  philosophy  an  individualist.  The  outward 
conditions  of  life  seemed  to  him  but  "A  stuff 
to  try  the  soul's  strength  on,  educe  the 
man."  He  realized,  what  reformers  are  con- 
tinually forgetting,  that  society  is  made  up 
of  folks,  and  that  all  social  progress  rests, 
in  the  last  analysis,  on  the  development  of 
individual  character.  The  chief  obstacles  in 
its  path  are  not  bad  laws  and  imperfect  social 
machinery  so  much  as  bad  men  and  imperfect 
human  character.  Though  the  aim  of  reform  be 
to  assure  to  all  men  comfortable  homes,  sufficient 
food  and  clothing,  the  opportunity  for  culture, 
and  the  like,  yet  the  immediate  effort  of  reform 
is  always  to  protect  men  from  the  injustice  and 
inhumanity  of  their  more  powerful  neighbors. 
The  so-called  "progressive  program"  in  American 
political  life  is  concerned  mainly  with  proposals 
for  restraining  the  cupidity  or  guarding  against 
the  incompetence  of  men.  Tariff  reform  is  in- 
tended to  prevent  the  unscrupulous  manufacturer 
from  charging  too  much  for  his  goods.  The  recall 
is  a  device  for  getting  rid  of  dishonest  or  incom- 

180 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

petent  oflBcials.  Political  bossism,  the  bad  trust, 
unreasonable  restraint  of  trade,  all  are  the  fruit 
of  greed  and  lack  of  common  honesty.  It  is  the 
capitalist  who  is  unwilling  to  pay  a  fair  wage 
and  the  laborer  who  is  not  worthy  of  his  hire 
who  together  create  the  labor  problem.  It  is 
selfishness  which  breaks  up  homes.  It  is  self- 
indulgence  which  gives  rise  to  the  problems  of 
vice  and  intemperance.  If  the  money  spent  for 
the  present  hideous  war,  the  outgrowth  of  mutual 
envy,  greed,  and  distrust  among  the  leading 
nations  of  Europe,  had  been  turned  into  chan- 
nels of  legitimate  production;  if  it  might  be  aug- 
mented by  the  money  spent  during  the  last  ten 
years  in  needless  extravagance  and  vicious  self- 
indulgence  and  by  the  cost  during  the  same 
period  of  the  enforced  waste  of  idleness,  ineflS- 
ciency,  and  crime;  and  if  the  resulting  gain  might 
be  honestly  and  fairly  distributed  among  men, 
there  would  be  an  end  of  poverty  and  distress. 
The  problem  of  character  is  the  root-problem 
of  social  progress. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  the  characters  in 
human  history  who  have  exerted  the  most  power- 
ful influence  for  the  uplift  of  the  race  have  been 
open  to  the  same  charge  as  Browning — of  being 
individualists,  and  viewing  with  indifference  the 
social  struggles  of  mankind.  Gotama,  Socrates, 
Luther,  Wesley,  were  individualists,  bending  their 
energies  to  the  solution  of  the  spiritual  problem 
of  the  individual  soul.     In  the  degree  of  their 

181 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

success  in  this  direction  was  the  power  they 
exerted  in  behalf  of  human  progress.  All  the 
ingenuity  of  Bouck  White  and  kindred  inter- 
preters has  not  been  able  to  make  of  Jesus  Christ 
a  political  agitator  and  social  reformer.  In  a 
world  more  than  half  slave  he  never  mentioned 
slavery.  So  far  from  attacking  the  drink  evil, 
he  is  said  to  have  made  wine  for  a  wedding  feast, 
and  was  called  by  his  enemies  a  winebibber.  If 
he  attacked  wealth  and  enjoined  almsgiving,  it 
was  less  in  behalf  of  the  poor  than  to  save  the 
souls  of  the  rich.  Though  his  zeal  for  righteous- 
ness led  him  into  conflict  with  the  grasping  and 
powerful  political  leaders  of  his  nation,  and  he 
was  condemned  to  death  as  an  agitator,  the 
falsity  of  the  charge  is  evident  on  its  very  face. 
He  was  the  King  of  Truth,  and  walked  through 
the  world  sublimely  indifferent  to  the  external 
conditions  of  life  which  enslave  the  soul  and  bring 
it  into  subjection  to  the  things  which  are  seen 
and  temporal. 

It  is  because  Browning  was  moved  by  the 
same  spirit,  because  he  regarded  the  soul's  in- 
terests as  paramount  and  held  the  outward  cir- 
cumstances of  life  to  be  nothing  but 

Machinery,  just  meant 

To  give  thy  soul  its  bent. 

Try  thee  and  turn  thee  forth,  sufficiently  impressed, 

that  he  seemed  so  indifferent  to  the  movements 
in  the  world  about  him  which  aimed  at  the  im- 
provement of  social  conditions. 

182 


OF  LIFE  AND  LOVE 

The  same  thing  is  equally  true  of  Kipling  in 
our  own  day.  No  man  of  our  time  has  seen  more 
deeply  into  life,  or  held  to  the  truth  more  sanely 
and  steadfastly.  In  story  and  verse  he  has  taught 
great,  fundamental  truths  of  democracy,  of  loyalty, 
of  zest  and  meaning  in  the  day's  work;  but  the 
social  movements  which  absorb  the  interest  of 
Shaw  and  Wells  might  be  nonexistent  so  far  as 
he  is  concerned.  For  all  that,  his  work  will  live 
when  their  names  will  have  been  forgotten. 

We  pass  over  the  charge,  therefore,  that  Brown- 
ing was  so  absorbed  in  metaphysical  speculations 
that  he  was  indifferent  to  the  great  human  prob- 
lems of  our  time.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  be- 
cause he  was  so  concerned  with  the  essential 
progress  of  the  race  that  he  devoted  himself 
so  assiduously  to  the  consideration  of  those 
fundamental  spiritual  factors  upon  which  all 
true  progress  must  rest.  What  he  sought  was 
an  evaluation  of  human  nature,  a  ground  broad 
and  firm  enough  for  a  world  to  stand  on.  He  was 
far  in  advance  of  his  own  day — in  advance  even  of 
ours — in  his  sure  confidence  in  the  spiritual  worth 
and  dignity  of  humanity,  and  his  belief  in  the  in- 
evitable triumph  of  the  spiritual  over  the  temporal. 

Poor  vaunt  of  life  indeed, 
Were  man  but  formed  to  feed 

On  joy,  to  solely  seek,  and  find,  and  feast. 
Such  feasting  ended,  then 
As  sure  an  end  to  men — 

Irks  care  the  cropful  bird,  frets  doubt  the  maw- 
crammed  beast? 

183 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Then,  wt'loonie  oac-h  rohulf 

Thai  turns  earth's  smoothness  rougli, 

Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand,  but  go! 
Be  our  joys  three  parts  pain! 
Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain; 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang;  dare  never  grudge 
the  throe.  — ("Rabbi  Ben  Ezra.") 

Thus  the  poet's  attitude  toward  those  hard- 
ships and  difficulties  in  humfui  life  which  give 
rise  to  the  social  problem  leads  us  directly  to  the 
consideration  of  his  interpretation  of  the  problem 
of  evil,  and  of  the  relation  of  struggle  to  progress 
— a  matter  which  requires  a  chapter  to  itself. 


184 


CHAPTER  VII 
OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

I  REMEMBER  professing  at  the  outset  that 
these  papers  did  not  assume  to  discuss  Browning's 
"philosophy,"  nor  to  analyze  his  "message." 
Nevertheless  I  am  conscious  of  having  got  into 
rather  deep  water.  My  only  justification  is  that 
these  are  still  "confessions,"  and  that  what  I 
am  trying  to  do  is  not  so  much  to  set  forth  what 
Browning  intended  to  teach  as  to  declare  what 
in  my  own  thinking  finds  illustration  and  con- 
firmation in  his  work.  This  is  what  Browning 
means  to  me.  At  the  same  time  I  am  confident 
that  I  do  not  entirely  misapprehend  the  poet's 
own  point  of  view.  This,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is 
how  life  looked  and  what  it  meant  to  him. 

The  recognition  of  the  poet's  essential  indi- 
vidualism, and  of  his  interpretation  of  life's 
hardships  and  diflficulties  as  "a  stuff  to  try  the 
soul's  strength  on,"  has  brought  us  to  the  whole 
problem  of  evil,  and  to  a  closer  examination  of 
the  poet's  "optimism." 

The  problem  is  as  old  as  Job  and  Ecclesiastes, 
or  for  that  matter,  as  the  Book  of  the  Dead; 
as  new  as  John  Stuart  Mill,  as  Nietzsche,  or  the 
Russian  novelists.    Whence  come  the  limitations 

185 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

and  contradictions  of  life,  its  sins,  its  tragedies 
and  sorrows,  its  brutal  cynicisms,  its  glowing 
promises  and  heartless  refusals,  its  deadly  monot- 
onies and  ghastly  terrible  contrasts?  Is  it  all 
illusion,  whence  the  only  escape  is  the  cessation 
of  desire?  Is  it  a  blind  and  cruel  fate,  to  which 
we  can  only  as  blindly  submit?  Are  the  gods 
indifferent  to  human  joys  and  sorrows,  dwelling 
in  the  passionless  calm  of  their  infinite  elevation? 
Or  is  the  Almighty  intent  on  his  own  glory,  to 
enhance  which  men  must  be  content  to  suffer 
and  fail  and  be  damned?  May  it  not  be  that 
God  is  not  the  Almighty,  after  all,  but  that  he 
is  caught  in  the  web  of  his  own  devising?  That, 
having  brought  into  existence  a  world  of  sentient 
creatures,  he  finds  himself  powerless  to  solve  the 
contradictions  of  their  lot,  and  can  only  help- 
lessly await  the  outcome  of  their  struggles?  Or 
must  w^e  not  say  tliat  for  man  to  ask  the  mean- 
ing of  life  is  simple  folly;  that  so  far  as  human 
knowledge  goes,  man  is  only  a  by-product  of  the 
operation  of  laws  and  forces  whose  workings  he 
can  dimly  trace,  but  whose  origin  and  whose 
outcome  lie  far  beyond  the  scope  of  his  feeble 
imaginings?  Let  him  content  himself  within  the 
limitations  of  his  lot,  using  such  discoveries  as 
he  may  stumble  upon  in  his  daily  experience  to 
alleviate  his  condition  as  far  as  may  be,  with  no 
questions  asked  as  to  anything  beyond. 

Such  are  some  of  the  answers  that  have  been 
suggested  from  time  to  time  to  the  riddle  of  the 

186 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

universe.  Greek  philosophy  issued  in  stoical  sub- 
mission. Oriental  pessimism  looks  only  for 
annihilation  or  its  equivalent  in  Nirvana.  Modern 
science  abandons  the  problem  as  insoluble.  The 
latest  suggestion  is  that  of  Bergson,  who  finds 
the  Creative  Power  forever  experimenting,  feeling 
its  way  to  ends  which  may  and  doubtless  will 
prove  good,  but  which  are  in  no  wise  foreseen 
or  predetermined.  Or  if  the  ultimate  end  may  be 
regarded  as  purposed,  the  means  thereto  are  the 
product  of  momentary  activity  and  choice,  as  a 
practiced  orator  may  know  clearly  the  thought 
he  desires  to  convey,  but  leaves  the  form  in  which 
it  is  cast  to  be  determined  by  the  accident  of  the 
moment,  choosing  his  words  and  sentences  and 
even  his  illustrations  impromptu.  Thus  the 
spoken  address  is  the  product  of  the  creative 
evolution  of  his  thought,  though  the  total  im- 
pression upon  his  audience  has  been  foreknown 
and  predestined  by  his  will. 

There  is  much  that  is  suggestive  and  helpful 
in  this  way  of  thinking.  It  relieves  the  Almighty 
to  some  extent  of  responsibility  for  the  particular 
accidents  of  experience,  and  leaves  room  for  the 
variety  and  freedom  of  real  life.  It  helps  to 
solve,  for  our  feeling  if  not  for  our  insight,  the 
eternal  contradiction  between  the  sovereignty  of 
the  Infinite  Purpose  and  the  freedom  of  the  indi- 
vidual will.  But  it  assumes,  as  religion  must 
forever  assume,  the  rightness  and  worth-whileness 
of  the  whole  process.     We  must  at  least  believe 

187 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

tliat  the  Etornal  Orator  lius  ii  meaning  which  he 
seeks  at  all  hazard  to  convey. 

This  original  assumption  is  a  matter  of  prime 
importance.  We  may  call  the  chessboard  white 
or  black:  in  either  case  the  opposite  squares  are 
to  be  accounted  for.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  few 
persons  in  the  world  have  ever  been  really  thor- 
oughgoing pessimists.  The  very  fact  that  the 
problem  is  universally  recognized  as  the  "problem 
of  evil"  instead  of  the  "problem  of  good"  indicates 
the  underlying  assumption  that  life  is  essentially 
right  and  just.  The  chessboard  is  white — it  is 
the  black  squares  that  give  us  pause. 


As  we  have  seen,  Browning  not  only  takes 
the  worth-whileness  of  life  for  granted,  but  he 
heartily  accepts  all  the  implications  that  go  with 
it.  It  is  the  robustness  of  his  assertion  of  life's 
values  that  has  given  him  the  title  of  "opti- 
mist." 

This  world's  no  blot  for  us  or  blank, 
It  means  intensely  and  means  good; 
To  find  its  meaning  is  my  meat  and  drink. 

— ("Fra  Lippo  Lippi.") 

That  this  is  only  a  preliminary  assumption 
Bishop  Blougram  frankly  admits,  but  he  points 
out  with  equal  clearness  the  instability  of  the 
opposite  assumption.  Suppose  we  deny  the 
validity  of  faith? 

188 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

.    .    .   All  we've  gained  is,  that  belief, 
As  unbelief  before,  shakes  us  by  fits. 
Confounds  us  like  its  predecessor.     Where's 
The  gain?     How  can  we  guard  our  unbelief. 
Make  it  bear  fruit  to  us? — the  problem  here. 
Just  when  we  are  safest,  there's  a  sunset-touch, 
A  fancy  from  a  flower-bell,  some  one's  death, 
A  chorus-ending  from  Euripides — 
And  that's  enough  for  fifty  hopes  and  fears 
As  old  and  new  at  once  as  nature's  self. 
To  rap  and  knock  and  enter  in  our  soul. 
Take  hands  and  dance  there,  a  fantastic  ring. 
Round  the  ancient  idol,  on  his  base  again — 
The  grand  Perhaps! 

This  is  a  matter  not  sufficiently  considered  by 
our  modern  pessimists.  Given  the  sun,  it  is 
easy  enough  to  account  for  shadow.  If  we  fix 
our  minds  on  shadow  as  the  ultimate  reality,  it 
is  not  so  easy  to  account  for  light.  Given  reason, 
we  may  readily  appreciate  the  folly  of  ignorance 
or  childishness;  but  what  shall  we  say  of  the 
triumphs  of  reason  if  unreason  be  the  ground  of 
reality?  Given  goodness  as  the  sum  of  things, 
we  understand  how  willfulness  may  sin  against 
the  truth.  But  if  reality  is,  after  all,  nothing 
but  the  chance  by-product  of  hidden  necessities, 
whence  the  immeasurable  significance  of  justice 
and  love? 

The  problem  of  evil  is  dark  enough.  Progress 
through  the  suppression  of  the  unfit,  life  sup- 
ported through  the  death  of  the  innocent,  nature 
red  in  tooth  and  claw;  history  drenched  with  the 
blood  of  endless  strife;  civilization  resting  on  the 

189 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

bowed  necks  of  serfs — these  things  shriek  against 
our  creed.  The  man  who  lias  not  felt  the  un- 
speakable tragetly  of  exislenee,  whose  heart  has 
not  stood  still  before  the  horror  of  this  bottomless 
Inferno  which  we  call  human  life,  has  no  right 
to  speiik.  The  rosewater  gospel  so  attractive  to 
many  modern  folk,  which  blithely  shuts  its  eyes 
and  says  there  is  no  evil,  represents  only  the 
despair  of  feeble  minds. 

Nevertheless,  there  are  only  two  alternatives. 
Life  either  means  something  or  it  does  not. 
Either  there  lies  behind  it  a  sleepless  wisdom, 
and  "through  the  ages  an  increasing  Purpose 
runs,"  or  it  is  "a  tale  told  by  an  idiot,  full  of 
sound  and  fury,  signifying  nothing."  Neither 
view  may  be  demonstrated  beyond  a  peradventure. 
Either  one  is  a  faith,  a  working  hypothesis,  chosen 
because  it  seems  to  fit  in  with  the  greater  number 
of  facts.  If,  then,  we  assume  the  eternal  Wis- 
dom, we  may  find  hints  regarding  the  significance 
of  evil  which  at  least  may  "stop  our  despair." 
If  we  deny  this  assumption,  we  not  only  are  left 
without  any  tangible  clew,  but  goodness  and 
truth  themselves  are  left  meaningless  and  void. 

The  conviction  that  even  the  darkest  problems 
of  sin  and  pain  are  not  utterly  opaque  to  the 
infinite  Wisdom  and  Love  is  nothing  more  than 
the  application  to  the  realm  of  the  spirit  of  the 
principle  which  Hes  at  the  very  foundation  of 
science,  namely,  that  no  part  of  creation,  how- 
ever baffling,  can  prove  ultimately  intractable  to 

190 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

reason.  The  assumptions  of  science  are  every 
whit  as  mystical  as  those  of  religion.  The  un- 
solved problems  of  science  are  as  perplexing. 
The  affirmations  of  science  quite  as  often  as 
those  of  theology  seem  to  the  wayfaring  man  to 
smack  of  mythology.  We  are  wont  to  visit  our 
scorn  on  the  futility  of  mediaeval  scholasticism, 
wasting  itself  in  such  bootless  discussions  as, 
"how  many  angels  can  dance  on  the  point  of  a 
cambric  needle?"  The  affirmations  of  recent 
physics  concerning  the  ether,  rapt  descriptions  of 
the  dance  of  electrons  within  the  orbit  of  an  atom 
of  hydrogen,  and  various  similar  matters  familiar 
to  the  reader  of  recent  scientific  literature,  are  in 
point  of  fact  quite  as  remote  from  the  tangible 
realities  of  every  day,  and  quite  as  dependent  on 
the  supposed  exigencies  of  a  system  of  logical 
reasoning,  as  scholasticism  itself. 

Far  be  it  from  a  mere  layman  so  much  as  to 
express  an  opinion  on  these  high  matters.  One 
must  endeavor  to  exercise  a  modesty  and  self- 
restraint  which,  alas!  is  quite  foreign  to  the 
magazine  scientist — sometimes,  indeed,  to  his 
masters.  But  the  layman  is  quite  within  his 
rights  to  protest  that  if  science  requires  these 
abstruse  mythologies  as  the  background  of  her 
practical  discoveries,  she  has  no  right  to  object 
if  the  man  of  God  claims  equal  right  to  make 
those  assumptions  which  his  experience  and  study 
have  shown  him  are  needful  for  the  interpreta- 
tion of  spiritual  problems. 

191 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

II 

The  question  has  often  been  raised  whether 
Browning's  optimistic  view  of  life  did  not  rest 
at  bottom  on  temperament  and  unbroken  physical 
hejUth,  ratluT  tlian  on  superior  insight  or  a 
successful  working  philosophy.  We  are  told  that 
his  bodily  vitality  afi'ected  others  like  an  electric 
shock.  He  seemed  to  radiate  health  and  good 
spirits.  He  drew  Elizabeth  Barrett  out  of  the 
shadow  of  death  by  the  sheer  force  of  his  will 
to  live  and  to  make  her  live. 

Why,  it  is  asked,  should  not  a  man  who  was 
never  sick  a  moment  in  his  life,  whose  vital  energies 
were  always  above  par,  take  a  cheerful  view  of  life.'^ 
How  could  he  help  being  an  optimist?  As  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  declared,  when  asked  whether  life 
is  worth  living,  "That  depends  on  the  liver." 

It  is  nothing  to  the  point  to  reply  that  Browning 
was  subject  to  terrible  headaches  which  inter- 
rupted his  work  for  days  at  a  time,  and  gave 
his  sympathetic  correspondent  much  anxious  con- 
cern; since  a  modern  doctor  would  doubtless 
have  attributed  these  sufferings  to  eyestrain, 
caused  by  that  unequal  vision  to  which  we  have 
elsewhere  referred.  Headaches  due  to  a  sluggish 
liver  might  cause  hypochondria,  but  those  due 
to  eyestrain  do  not  usually  affect  either  the 
general  health  or  the  mental  attitude. 

The  real  answer  to  this  contention  is  that 
those   who   make   it   by   the   same   token   admit 

192 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

that  optimism  is  the  sane  and  normal  attitude, 
and  that  pessimism  is  the  product  of  disordered 
nerves  and  low  physical  vitality.  The  proper 
place  for  its  advocates  is  the  sanitarium.  Let 
us  cheerfully  grant  that  Browning  was  a  vigorous 
and  healthy  Englishman  who  took  a  perfectly 
simple  attitude  toward  life,  neither  rebelling  at 
its  limitations  nor  whimpering  at  its  hardships, 
but  resolutely  striving  to  make  the  best  of  it, 
and  to  discover  what  way  of  thinking  about  it 
yielded  the  broadest  and  most  enduring  founda- 
tions for  such  an  attitude.  The  very  presence 
of  such  a  vigorous  and  wholesome  personality 
in  our  literature  has  a  tonic  effect. 

I  shall  never  forget  hearing  a  literary  friend 
tell  of  his  real  introduction  to  Browning.  He 
had  studied  him  perfunctorily,  of  course,  as  a 
part  of  his  college  work,  but  nothing  in  the  poet 
as  presented  in  the  classroom  had  especially  ap- 
pealed to  him.  One  day,  in  a  mood  of  great 
depression,  he  was  browsing  aimlessly  through 
the  college  library,  when  he  picked  up  a  volume 
of  Browning.  The  book  opened  at  the  last  page, 
and  his  eyes  fell  on  the  "Epilogue"  to  "Asolando": 

What  had  I  on  earth  to  do 
With  the  slothful,  with  the  mawkish,  the  unmanly? 
Like  the  aimless,  helpless,  hopeless,  did  I  drivel, 
— Being — who  ? 

One  who  never  turned  his  back  but  marched  breast 
forward. 
Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 

193 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Never   tlrrainoil,    lhoiii,fli    right    were   worsted,    wrong 

would  triunii)li, 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  arc  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleej)  to  wake. 

Tiic  lines  rang  in  his  ears  like  a  trumpet-call. 
His  mood  of  despondency  vanished  like  mist 
before  the  morning  sun,  and  in  its  place  came 
a  resolve  to  face  life  with  the  courage  and  re- 
sourcefulness of  which  the  poet  sang.  Afterward 
he  found  that  this  keynote  resounds  through  the 
whole  of  Browning's  poetry,  and  he  discovered 
he  had  made  a  new  literary  friend. 

I  am  quite  ready  to  grant  that  Browning's 
attitude  toward  life  is  the  triumph  of  person- 
ality over  the  outward  conditions  of  existence. 
Such  triumph  is  perhaps  more  obvious  in  the 
case  of  a  man  who,  like  Stevenson,  maintains 
his  cheerful  courage  in  the  face  of  disease  and 
death,  but  Browning's  healthful  vigor  bears  no 
less  powerful  witness  to  the  essential  sanity  of 
those  who  believe  in  the  best  of  life.  It  is  be- 
cause he  "was  ever  a  fighter"  that  he  could 
hold  even  failure  as  but  "a  triumph's  evidence 
for  the  fullness  of  the  days,"  and  treat  the  ills 
that  flesh  is  heir  to  wuth  such  disdain.  His  poetry 
is  a  constant  challenge  to  emulate  the  same  daunt- 
less courage.  When  Mr.  ]\Iore  desires  to  discover 
the  secret  of  Browning's  undiminishing  popularity 
he  would  do  well  to  take  this  into  account. 

I  admit  that  at  times  Browning's  assertion 
of  his  courage  is  almost  robustious.     I  fear  that 

194. 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

sometimes  he  doth  protest  too  much.  For  all 
that  he  is  a  fighter,  and  he  never  wields  his  sword 
so  doughtily  as  when  his  back  is  to  the  wall 
and  the  odds  are  against  him.  Like  Childe 
Roland,  it  is  when  the  apparitions  of  evil  about 
him  have  done  their  utmost  to  terrify  him,  and 
the  "Round  squat  turret,  blind  as  the  fool's 
heart,"  confronts  him  at  last,  that  "dauntless 
the  slug-horn  to  his  lips  he  sets,"  and  blows 
defiance  to  the  powers  of  darkness. 

He  has  learned  that  God  is,  after  all,  not  on 
the  side  of  the  heaviest  battalions — Napoleon 
spoke  too  soon;  at  Saint  Helena  he  might  have 
made  a  different  remark. 

"Instans  Tyrannus"  is  a  study  of  the  power- 
lessness  of  evil  in  the  face  of  simple  truth  and 
faith.  The  most  malevolent  power  quails  in 
the  end  before  the  might  of  innocence.  God 
and  one  are  a  majority. 

When  sudden — how  think  ye,  the  end? 

Did  I  say,  "without  friend"? 

Say  rather,   from  marge  to  blue  marge 

The  whole  sky  grew  his  targe 

With  the  sun's  self  for  visible  boss, 

While  an  Arm  ran  across 

Which  the  earth  heaved  beneath  like  a  breast. 

Where  the  wretch  was  safe  prest! 

Do  you  see?    Just  my  vengeance  complete. 

The  man  sprang  to  his  feet, 

Stood  erect,  caught  at  God's  skirts,  and  prayed! 

— So,  I  was  afraid! 

As  I  have  said  in  an  earlier  chapter,  I  am 
quite  willing  to  grant  that  Browning's  philosophy 

195 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

of  optiniisin  is  the  oiitconic  rather  than  the 
cause  of  his  optimistic  attitude.  He  believes 
in  life  because  he  cannot  help  himself — because 
to  him  it  "did  and  does  smack  sweet."  His 
reasons  for  this  attitude  are  an  afterthought. 
He  believes  them  because,  if  they  are  not  true, 
his  whole  life-structure  falls  to  the  ground. 

But,  as  I  have  argued  before,  all  this  is  but 
greater  evidence  of  their  essential  validity.  If 
life  must  be  meaningless  without  certain  great 
faiths,  then  let  us  hold  that  truth  against  the 
world.  It  is  no  answer  to  say  that  merely  wish- 
ing things  to  be  true  does  not  make  them  so. 
In  the  greatest  things  it  does.  Or,  perhaps 
better,  in  all  the  deeper  experiences  of  life  the 
desire  and  its  supply  are  necessary  correlatives. 
The  hunger  of  the  babe  no  more  surely  indicates 
the  breast  than  the  hunger  of  the  soul  for  friend- 
ship and  love  prophesies  its  fulfillment.  To  go 
on  and  apply  the  same  principle  to  the  loftiest 
ideals  of  life,  and  even  to  the  soul's  yearning 
for  God  and  immortality,  is  but  the  conviction 
that  life  is  all  of  one  piece. 

In  a  very  true  sense  the  largest  meanings  of 
life  have  their  ultimate  validity  in  nothing  in 
the  world  but  the  will  to  make  them  real.  If 
it  be  true  that  beneath  all  this  lies  the  structure 
of  Creation  itself,  or,  as  our  fathers  would  have 
said,  the  will  of  God,  yet  so  far  as  we  are  con- 
cerned the  will  that  truth  and  love  shall  be  is 
essentially    creative — these    things    do    not    and 

196 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

cannot  exist  for  us  except  as  we  desire  them. 
They  exist  only  in  our  desire,  and  the  strength 
of  that  desire  is  the  measure  of  our  power  to 
bring  them  to  pass. 

Ill 

It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  the  underlying 
ground  of  the  poet's  interpretation  of  the  prob- 
lem of  evil  is  his  conviction  of  the  worth  and 
significance  of  human  life,  and  his  reliance  on 
the  reality  and  power  of  the  Infinite  Wisdom 
and  Love  in  which  that  life  has  its  root.  He 
maintains  this  faith,  not  by  shutting  his  eyes  to 
the  sorrow  and  sin  and  pain  of  life,  but  by  hold- 
ing fast  to  his  conviction  in  the  face  of  all  the 

facts. 

Is  God  love  indeed. 
And  will  ye  hold  that  truth  against  the  world.'* 
— ("A  Death  in  the  Desert.") 

Like  Saint  John  and  the  Pope,  Browning 
sees  all  "this  dread  machinery  of  sin  and  sorrow, 
would  confound  me  else,"  against  the  back- 
ground of  this  Love.  For  him  as  for  Lowell, 
"Standeth  God  within  the  shadow,  keeping 
watch  above  his  own." 

It  is  in  this  light  that  he  seeks  to  interpret 
the  darker  places  of  experience.  He  brings 
forward  a  number  of  suggestions,  none  of  which 
is  intended  to  cover  all  the  ground,  but  all  of 
which  indicate  that  even  for  our  feeble  insight 
the  problem  is  not  altogether  opaque. 

197 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

His  first  suggestion  is  that  evil  is  intended 
to  ailord  llial  resistance  to  the  soul's  efforts 
througli  which  alone  strength  can  be  attained. 
We  have  already  remarked  that  his  feeling  of 
the  necessity  of  such  soul-discipline  rendered  him 
almost  oblivious  to  the  social  movements  which 
aim  at  the  alleviation  of  human  misery.  Even 
the  moral  weaknesses  which  cause  the  religious 
thinker  so  much  concern  Browning  sees  as  the  es- 
sential condition  of  true  moral  freedom  and  worth. 
The  friction  which  checks  the  working  of  our  ma- 
chinery is  the  necessary  condition  of  its  working. 
The  resistance  of  the  atmosphere  which  hinders 
the  flight  of  the  bird  is  essential  to  its  flight. 

Let  us  not  always  say, 
"Spite  of  this  flesh  to-day 

I  strove,  made  head,  gained  ground  upon  the  whole." 
As  the  bird  wings  and  sings, 
Let  us  cry,  "All  good  things 

Are  ours,  nor  soul  helps  flesh  more  now  than  flesh  helps 
soul."  —("Rabbi  Ben  Ezra.") 

No,  when  the  fight  begins  within  himself, 

A  man's  worth  something.     God  stoops  o'er  his  head, 

Satan  looks  up  between  his  feet — both  tug — 

He's  left,  himself,  i'  the  middle:  the  soul  wakes 

And  grows.    Prolong  that  battle  through  his  life! 

Never  leave  growing  till  the  life  to  come! 

— ("Bishop  Blougram's  Apology.") 

Was  the  trial  sore? 
Temptation  sharp?     Thank  God  a  second  time! 
Why  comes  temptation  but  for  man  to  meet 
And  master  and  make  crouch  beneath  his  foot, 
And  so  be  pedestal'd  in  triumph?     Pray, 
"Lead  us  into  no  such  temptations,  Lord!" 

198 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

Yea,  but,  O  Thou  whose  servants  are  the  bold, 
Lead  such  temptations  by  the  head  and  hair, 
Reluctant  dragons,  up  to  who  dares  fight, 
That  so  he  may  do  battle  and  have  praise. 

—("The  Pope.") 

Closely  akin  to  this  is  the  suggestion  of  Bishop 
Blougram  that  God  must  needs  thus  hide  him- 
self behind  the  darkness  of  human  experience, 
because  the  naked  soul  is  too  feeble  to  bear  the 
shock  of  clear  insight : 

Some  think,  Creation's  meant  to  show  him  forth: 

I  say  it's  meant  to  hide  him  all  it  can, 

And  that's  what  all  the  blessed  evil's  for. 

Its  use  in  Time  is  to  environ  us, 

Our  breath,  our  drop  of  dew,  with  shield  enough 

Against  that  sight  till  we  can  bear  its  stress. 

Under  a  vertical  sun,  the  exposed  brain 

And  lidless  eye  and  disemprisoned  heart 

Less  certainly  would  wither  up  at  once 

Than  mind,  confronted  with  the  truth  of  him. 

Another  phase  of  the  same  principle  is  the 
idea  that  man  can  truly  learn  only  through 
experience,  which  implies  mistake  and  failure. 

When  a  soul  has  seen 
By  the  means  of  Evil  that  Good  is  best. 
And,  through  earth  and  its  noise,  what  is  heaven's 
serene, — 
When  our  faith  in  the  same  has  stood  the  test — 
Why,  the  child  grown  man,  you  burn  the  rod, 

The  uses  of  labor  are  surely  done; 
There  remaineth  a  rest  for  the  people  of  God. 

— ("Old  Pictures  in  Florence.") 

This  is  the  ground  of  David's  hope  for  Saul: 

The  man  taught  enough  by  life's  dream,  of  the  rest 
to  make  sure; 

199 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

By  the  pain  throh  triumphantly  winninf^  intensified 
bHss, 

And  the  next  world's  reward  and  repDse  by  the  strug- 
gles of  this. 

There  are  always  two  ways  of  learning  the 
force  of  any  law — one  is  by  obedience,  the  other 
by  disobedience.  The  former  is  more  direct 
and  jjerfect— happy  the  world  if  men  had  never 
chosen  any  other  path.  Nevertheless,  the  path 
of  disobedience  no  less  surely  teaches  the  errant 
soul  the  worth  and  significance  of  truth.  The 
burnt  child  fears  the  fire.  It  may  be  that  in  the 
long  run  those  who  have  tasted  the  dire  effects 
of  lawlessness  and  self-will,  and  have  been  driven 
thereby  to  renewed  allegiance  to  the  eternal 
Right,  shall  prove  of  superior  spiritual  power 
and  worth  to  those  whose  sober  wishes  never 
learned  to  stray.  Is  it  not  written  of  the  elect, 
"Ye  shall  judge  angels"? 

Still  another  kindred  notion  is  that  of  Abt 
Vogler,  that  evil  forms  the  necessary  background 
of  good,  the  contrast  without  which  goodness 
itself  could  not  be  understood  and  appreciated. 

The  evil  is  null,  is  nought,  is  silence  implying  sound. 

Why  was  the  pause  prolonged  but  that  singing  might 

issue  thence.^ 
Why  rushed  the  discords  in  but  that  harmony  should 

be  prized? 

We  need  not  pause  upon  the  doctrine  that 
evil  is  in  itself  essentially  negative.  Our  Chris- 
tian Science  friends  have  rung  the  changes  upon 

200 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

this  notion.  They  have  not  always  sufficiently 
considered  that  a  negative  evil  may  be  just  as 
disastrous  as  a  positive  one.  A  hole  may  be 
said  to  be  negative,  a  disease  germ  positive: 
nevertheless  a  hole  will  sink  a  boat  quite  as 
successfully  as  tuberculosis  will  destroy  a  man. 
Browning  for  one  has  no  illusions  on  this  head. 
He  knows  full  well  the  power  of  evil  in  human 
experience,  but  he  is  so  confident  of  the  greater 
power  of  good  to  overcome  it  that  in  comparison 
the  evil  seems  negligible. 

The  other  doctrine,  that  without  the  con- 
trast of  evil  good  could  not  be  truly  experienced, 
requires  a  word.  John  Fiske  made  much  of 
this  doctrine  in  his  suggestive  little  book,  Through 
Nature  to  God.  In  so  far  as  it  contains  a  germ 
of  truth,  it  undoubtedly  contributes  to  a  theodicy. 
Rest  is  sweet  after  toil,  and  freedom  from  pain 
is  bliss  after  sore  anguish.  But  as  I  have  else- 
where written  in  this  connection,  "Silence  does 
not  of  necessity  imply  sound,  for  there  is  a  silence 
which  results  from  the  smashing  of  the  violin, 
the  wreck  of  the  organ.  Discord  sometimes  has 
no  meaning,  when  sweet  bells  become  'jangled, 
out  of  tune  and  harsh.'  Moreover,  when  we 
get  away  from  the  metaphor,  evil,  so  far  as  it 
is  moral  evil  and  not  mere  ignorance  and  mis- 
take, is  the  deliberate  choice  of  a  will  acting  in 
opposition  to  its  own  best  impulses.  From  this 
point  of  view  sin  is  as  positive  as  righteousness. 
The  personality  of  the  man  who  sins  is  as  active 

201 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

in  liiite  as  in  love.  Hate  may  be  a  wrong  use  of 
the  power  to  love,  but  a  use  it  is,  not  mere  failure 
to  use.  The  hate  is  as  positive  as  the  love. 
Whetlier  or  not  it  shall  be  as  eternal  must  be 
determinetl  on  other  grounds  than  mere  figures 
of  speeeh"  ("The  Poet's  Vision  of  Man,"  p.  23). 
If  the  principle  of  contrast  should  be  erected 
into  an  eternal  and  fundamental  law,  it  would 
justify  the  teaching  of  Tertullian  that  the  joys 
of  heaven  will  be  enhanced  by  the  sight  of  the 
torments  of  the  damned,  and  God  himself  might 
be  suspected  of  being  incapable  of  essential  good- 
ness unless  he  had  first  passed  through  an  expe- 
rience of  infinite  sin. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  principle  of  contrast, 
when  pushed  to  such  extremes,  rests  on  a  false 
psychology.  It  is  the  echo  of  English  sensa- 
tionalism, the  philosophy  of  Locke  and  Hume, 
of  Mill  and  Spencer,  which  regarded  the  mind 
as  a  tabula  rasa,  the  passive  recipient  of  impres- 
sions forced  upon  it  from  without.  In  such  a 
process  we  might  conceive  that  contrast  would 
give  effect  to  sensations  of  opposite  character, 
and  that  each  would  be  interpreted  purely  in 
terms  of  the  other.  Yet  even  then  it  is  permitted 
to  ask  how  contrasted  experiences  could  ever  in 
a  passive  mind  give  rise  to  an  experience  of 
contrast.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  sweet  and 
sour,  dark  and  light  are  7wt  interpreted  in  terms 
of  each  other.  Each  is  an  independent  expe- 
rience, having  its  own  peculiar  quality.     When 

202 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

we  reach  the  insight  that  all  experience  is  simply 
the  mind  reacting  according  to  its  own  inherent 
nature  to  the  stimuli  which  reach  it  from  the 
world  without,  we  begin  to  see  that  every  par- 
ticular experience,  whether  of  pleasure  or  of 
pain,  of  good  or  of  evil,  stands  in  its  own  right. 
It  is  an  ultimate  fact.  The  mind  has  all  these 
various  kinds  of  experience  because,  like  the 
bears  and  lions  of  Isaac  Watts's  nursery  rhyme, 
"it  is  its  nature  to,"  and  there  is  nothing  more 
to  be  said. 

What  is  true  with  regard  to  these  pairs  of 
opposites  in  sensation  and  experience  is  that 
contrast  heightens  their  effect  in  consciousness. 
From  this  point  of  view  we  may  agree  that  pain 
helps  us  to  appreciate  the  value  of  health,  and 
evil  bears  powerful  witness  to  the  worth  of  that 
which  is  good.  So  long  as  we  keep  it  steadily 
in  mind  that  this  single  principle  does  not  cover 
all  the  ground  and  must  not  be  erected  into  an 
absolute  truth,  we  may  find  many  instances 
where  it  helps  us  to  a  real  understanding  of 
life's  mysteries.  As  we  shall  see,  it  requires  a 
further  principle  to  complete  it;  for,  so  far  as 
this  world  goes,  evil  is  often  the  last  word,  and 
if  the  contrasted  good  is  to  be  attained,  it  must 
be  in  some  future  life,  where  the  discords  may 
be  resolved.  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  it  is  pre- 
cisely in  this  connection  that  Browning  employs 
the  doctrine,  as  heightening  the  demand  for  the 
life  beyond. 

203 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

III 

All  these  lesser  principles  for  the  understanding 
of  the  problem  of  human  suffering  and  sin  are 
subordinate,  liowever,  to  the  supreme  law  wherel)y 
Browning  interprets  the  whole  of  life,  namely,  that 
of  Progress.  As  the  evolutionist  finds  in  the  strug- 
gle for  existence  the  chief  instrumentality  through 
which  the  higher  and  more  significant  forms  of 
life  have  been  developed,  so  the  poet  sees  in  the 
limitations  and  inequalities  of  human  experience 
the  essential  factors  in  the   growth  of  the  soul. 

We  have  seen  how  the  fact  that  life  is  a  con- 
tinuous development  of  which  man  is  the  crown- 
ing glory  finds  expression  in  "Paracelsus": 

All  tended  to  mankind. 
And,  man  produced,  all  has  its  end  thus  far: 
But  in  completed  man  begins  anew 
A  tendency  to  God. 

The  same  truth  finds  illustration  in  all  Brown- 
ing's most  significant  work.  Saint  John  declares 
progress 

Man's  distinctive  mark  alone. 

Not  God's,  and  not  the  beasts':  God  is,  they  are, 

Man  partly  is  and  wholly  hopes  to  be. 

I  say  that  man  was  born  to  grow,  not  stop. 

— Man  is  not  God,  but  hath  God's  end  to  serve, 
A  master  to  obey,  a  course  to  take. 
Somewhat  to  cast  off,  somewhat  to  become. 
Grant  this,  then  man  must  pass  from  old  to  new. 
From  vain  to  real,  from  mistake  to  fact. 
From  what  seemed  good  to  what  proves  best. 
How  could  man  have  progression  otherwise? 

204 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  finds  the  end  of  life  to  be,  that  one 

shall 

Pass,  approved 
A  man,  for  aye  removed 
From  the  developed  brute;  a  God  though  in  the  germ. 

It  is  from  this  point  of  view  that  all  the  ex- 
periences of  life  are  to  be  judged.  Is  man's 
mind  feeble  of  grasp,  his  will  warped,  his  judg- 
ment imperfect?  How  else.^^  Man  is  but  a 
child.  His  distorted  notions  of  truth  are  but 
the  groping  of  an  undeveloped  mind  after  reality. 
His  superstitions  are  only  faiths  half-understood. 
Even  his  sins  are  in  the  main  but  childish  will- 
fulness and  folly.  He  is  put  into  this  world 
to  learn  and  grow. 

Such  progress  could  no  more  attend  his  soul 
Were  all  it  struggles  after  found  at  first 
And  guesses  changed  to  knowledge  absolute. 
Than  motion  wait  his  body,  were  all  else 
Than  it  the  solid  earth  on  every  side, 
Where  now  through  space  he  moves  from  rest  to  rest. 
—("A  Death  in  the  Desert.") 

An  interesting  putting  of  this  truth  is  found 
in  "Old  Pictures  in  Florence,"  where  the  crude 
attempts  of  the  earlier  mediaeval  artists  to  paint 
the  things  they  saw  are  preferred  to  the  highest 
perfection  attained  by  Greek  sculpture,  simply 
because  they  point  to  progress.  Greek  art  marked 
absolute  perfection. 

So,  you  saw  yourself  as  you  wished  you  were. 
As  you  might  have  been,  as  you  cannot  be; 

Earth  here,  rebuked  by  Olympus  there: 
And  grew  content  in  your  poor  degree 
205 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

With  y(Mir  little  junvor,  by  Ihoso  statues'  godhead, 
Anci  your  little  scope,  hy  their  eyes'  full  sway, 

And  your  little  grace,  by  their  grace  embodied, 
Aud  your  little  date,  by  their  forms  that  stay. 

So,  testing  your  weakness  by  their  strength, 

Your  meager  charms  by  their  rounded  beauty. 
Measured  by  Art  in  your  breadth  and  length. 

You  learned — to  submit  is  a  mortal's  duty. 
— ^Tien  I  say  "you"  'tis  the  common  soul. 

The  collective,  I  mean:  the  race  of  Man 
That  receives  life  in  parts  to  live  as  a  whole, 

And  grow  here  according  to  God's  clear  plan. 

Growth  came  when,  looking  your  last  on  them  all. 

You  turned  your  eyes  inwardly  one  fine  day 
And  cried  with  a  start — What  if  we  so  small 

Be  greater  and  grander  the  while  than  they? 
Are  they  perfect  of  lineament,  perfect  of  stature? 

In  both,  of  such  lower  types  are  we 
Precisely  because  of  our  wider  nature; 

For  time  theirs — ours  for  eternity. 

To-day's  brief  passion  limits  their  range; 

It  seethes  with  the  morrow  for  us,  and  more. 
They  are  perfect — how  else?  they  shall  never  change: 

We  are  faulty — why  not?  we  have  time  in  store. 
The  Artificer's  hand  is  not  arrested 

With  us;  we  are  rough-hewn,  nowise  polished: 
They  stand  for  our  copy,  and,  once  invested 

With  all  they  can  teach,  we  shall  see  them  abolished. 

*Tis  a  lifelong  toil  till  our  lump  be  leaven — 

The  better!     \Miat's  come  to  perfection  perishes. 
Things  learned  on  earth  we  shall  practice  in  heaven: 

Works  done  least  rapidly.  Art  most  cherishes. 
Thyself  shalt  afford  the  example,  Giotto! 

Thy  one  work,  not  to  increase  or  diminish, 
Done  at  a  stroke,  was  just  (was  it  not?)     "O!" 

Thy  great  Campanile  is  still  to  finish. 

206 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

On  which  I  conclude,  that  the  early  painters, 

To  cries  of  "Greek  art  and  what  more  wish  you?" — 
Replied,  "To  become  now  self-acquainters. 

And  paint  man,  man,  whatever  the  issue! 
Make  new  hopes  shine  through  the  flesh  they  fray, 

New  fears  aggrandize  the  rags  and  tatters: 
To  bring  the  invisible  full  into  play! 

Let  the  visible  go  to  the  dogs — what  matters?" 

This  doctrine,  that  life  is  to  be  interpreted 
not  by  what  it  is  but  by  what  it  promises,  may 
be  applied  to  many  different  phases  of  human 
experience.  It  enables  us  to  rest  content  in  our 
imperfect  insight,  striving  ever  for  more  per- 
fect understanding,  yet  nowise  disheartened  by 
our  failure  to  penetrate  the  baffling  mystery  of 
existence;  since  our  very  failure  bears  witness 
to  the  vastness  of  the  truth  we  would  compre- 
hend, while  the  unsatisfied  hunger  for  truth  pro- 
claims our  kindred  greatness. 

The  same  principle  makes  it  possible  for  us  to 
recognize  clearly  our  moral  weakness  and  folly 
without  sinking  into  the  impotence  of  despair, 
since  we  are  assured  that  if  we  persist,  our  moral 
struggles  must  be  crowned  with  victory. 

'Tis  not  what  man  does  that  exalts  him,  but  what  man 
would  do.  —("Saul.") 

What  I  aspired  to  be 
And  was  not,  comforts  me: 

A  brute  I  might  have  been  but  would  not  sink  i'  the 
scale.  —("Rabbi  Ben  Ezra.") 

As  the  efforts  of  a  child  are  valued,  not  for 
what  they  accomplish  but  for  what  they  promise, 

207 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

and  because  tliey  afford  training  and  experience, 
so  humanity's  attainments  are  far  less  important 
than  the  efl'ort  tliey  called  forth. 

Here  work  eiitough  to  watch 

The  Master  work,  and  catch 

Hints  of  the  proper  craft,  tricks  of  the  tool's  true  play. 

Above  all,  it  is  the  aspiration  after  truth,  the 
desire  to  achieve,  the  hunger  and  thirst  after 
righteousness,  that  are  the  real  measure  of  man's 
value,  not  only  to  society,  but  to  himself  and 
to  God. 

Not  on  the  vulgar  mass 

Called  "work,"  must  sentence  pass. 

Things  done,  that  took  the  eye  and  had  the  price; 

O'er  which  from  level  stand 

The  low  world  laid  its  hand. 

Found  straightway  to  its  mind,  could  value  in  a  trice. 

But  all  the  world's  coarse  thumb 
And  finger  failed  to  plumb. 
So  passed  in  making  up  the  main  account; 
All  instincts  immature, 
All  purposes  unsure. 

That  weighed  not  as  his  work  yet  swelled  the  man's 
amount. 

Thoughts,  hardly  to  be  packed 
Into  a  narrow  act. 

Fancies,  that  broke  through  language  and  escaped; 
All  I  could  never  be. 
All,  men  ignored  in  me. 

This  I  was  worth  to  God,  whose  wheel  the  pitcher 
shaped.  — (Ibid.) 

This  principle  likewise  affords  some  measure 
of  meaning  to  the  experience  of  disappointment 

208 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

and  suffering.  If  a  man  may  believe  that  his 
own  character  gains  in  wisdom  and  strength 
through  such  experiences,  then  he  can  afford 
to  "be  patient  and  proud  and  soberly  acquiesce." 
The  Pope  bids  Caponsacchi 

"Be  glad  thou  hast  let  light  into  the  world, 
Through  that  irregular  breach  o'  the  boundary — see 
The  same  upon  thy  path  and  march  assured. 
Learning  anew  the  use  of  soldiership, 
Self-abnegation,  freedom  from  all  fear. 
Loyalty  to  the  life's  end!    Ruminate, 
Deserve  the  initiatory  spasm — once  more 
Work,  be  unhappy  but  bear  life,  my  son!" 

Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  goes  still  further,  and  declares 
all  life  to  be  nothing  but 

"Machinery,  just  meant 
To  give  thy  soul  its  bent, 
Try  thee  and  turn  thee  forth,  sufficiently  impressed." 

In  the  same  mood  Saint  John  says,  in  a  passage 
we  have  quoted  before, 

"For  life,  with  all  it  yields  of  joy  and  woe 
And  hope  and  fear — believe  the  aged  friend — 
Is  just  our  chance  o'  the  prize  of  learning  love. 
How  love  might  be,  hath  been  indeed,  and  is; 
And  that  we  hold  thenceforth  to  the  uttermost 
Such  prize  despite  the  envy  of  the  world. 
And,  having  gained  truth,  keep  truth:  that  is  all." 

One  further  consideration  appears  in  the  poet's 
interpretation  of  the  character  of  Christ,  namely, 
that  suffering  often  becomes  a  revelation  of  the 
Infinite  love,  and  so  becomes  an  instrument  in 
furthering  the  growth  of  another's  soul.     Even 

209 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  IJUOWNING  LOVEll 

liuinan  .siitt'orinf^  may  boar  that  quality,  as  Poin- 
pilia  declares  when  she  bids  her  soldier-saint 

"Wait  God's  instant  men  call  years; 
Meantime  hold  hard  by  Irnth  and  his  great  soul, 
Do  out  the  duly!     Through  such  souls  alone 
God  stooping  sliows  sufficient  of  his  light 
For  us  i'  the  dark  to  rise  by.     And  I  rise." 

It  is  evident  that  progress  in  such  a  world 
is  no  mere  matter  of  mechanical  reactions,  the 
by-product  of  economic  forces,  a  function  of 
climate  and  food  supply.  It  is  in  its  very  nature 
a  function  of  character,  of  spiritual  develop- 
ment, born  of  the  power  of  the  human  mind  and 
soul  to  react  upon  its  environment,  to  turn  upon 
the  conditions  by  which  it  is  surrounded  and 
under  which  it  lives,  to  modify  and  improve  them. 

Rejoice  we  are  allied 
To  that  which  doth  provide 
And  not  partake,  effect  and  not  receive! 
A  spark  disturbs  our  clod; 
Nearer  we  hold  of  God 

Who  gives,  than  of  his  tribes  that  take,  I  must  believe. 

— ("Rabbi  Ben  Ezra.") 

Even  social  progress  depends  on  the  develop- 
ing and  perfecting  of  the  individual.  It  is  one 
of  the  strange  contradictions  of  human  experience 
that  those  who  prate  most  of  progress  and  pro- 
fess themselves  most  devoted  to  the  welfare 
of  mankind  should  in  these  days  be  so  largely 
the  devotees  of  the  "philosophy  of  dirt,"  of 
the  mechanical  interpretation  of  human  life. 
In  point  of  fact,  a  mechanical  philosophy  is  in 

210 


OF  THE  PROBLEM  OF  EVIL 

itself  the  chief  barrier  to  progress.  If  man  is 
nothing  but  result,  and  nowhere  cause,  then  it 
is  folly  to  exhort  him  to  efiFort.  If  he  is  the  vic- 
tim of  circumstances,  if  his  character  is  inevitably 
determined  by  the  quality  of  his  food,  the  cubic 
air  space  in  his  sleeping  chamber,  then  education 
is  a  waste  of  time,  and  the  attempt  to  further 
political  justice  by  extending  democracy  is  the 
height  of  absurdity.  The  well-fed  and  well- 
housed  are  by  hypothesis  the  only  ones  who 
can  be  regarded  as  good  or  intelligent,  and  it 
is  for  them,  in  the  exercise  of  the  impulses  which 
the  working  of  mechanical  necessity  creates  in 
them,  to  lord  it  over  the  rest  of  mankind  in 
such  manner  as  seemeth  them  good. 

But  our  practice,  as  always,  is  infinitely  su- 
perior to  our  theories,  and  we  go  on  striving  for 
political  and  social  progress,  resolute,  in  spite 
of  our  philosophy,  in  the  conviction  of  the  per- 
fectibility of  human  nature  and  the  supremacy 
of  character  over  circumstances.  High  thinking 
still  has  power  to  lend  spice  to  plain  living,  and 
the  love  of  justice  wars  against  man's  inhumanity 
to  man  until  the  world  shall  find  its  highest 
social  order  in  ''righteousness  and  peace  and 
joy  in  holiness  of  spirit."  Such  a  world  must 
of  necessity  be  filled  with  sorrow  and  disappoint- 
ment, with  pain  and  wrong,  so  long  as  the  end 
remains  unattained.  But  these  things  not  only 
challenge  the  will  to  struggle  onward  toward 
that  divine  event,  but  afford  the  discipline  and 

211 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

1  raining  wluTohy  men  sliiill  become  worthy  and 
al)le  to  achieve  that  high  destiny. 

It  is  evident,  liowever,  lluit  such  faith  in 
human  progress,  resting,  as  it  does,  on  the  hope 
of  individual  no  less  than  of  social  perfection, 
requires  for  its  fulfillment  Browning's  further 
faith  in  an  ultimate  future  for  the  individual 
beyond  the  limits  of  earthly  experience.  Cer- 
tainly, few  of  our  ideals  are  attained  here.  If 
life  is  a  probation — and  this  is  the  real  meaning 
of  progress,  though  theology  has  generally  em- 
phasized the  peril  of  failure,  whereas  the  poet 
has  laid  chief  stress  on  the  hope  of  success — if 
we  are  placed  between  good  and  evil,  "Life's 
business  being  just  the  terrible  choice,"  then 
there  must  of  necessity  be  some  future  sphere 
where  the  award  shall  be  made,  and  "every 
winter  turn  to  spring."  It  remains,  therefore,  to 
consider  the  poet's  faith  in  immortality,  which 
all  his  readers  have  recognized  as  the  keystone 
in  his  arch  of  truth. 


212 


CHAPTER  VIII 
PROSPICE 

My  friend  the  Professor  of  Psychology — the 
saints  be  good  to  him,  for  he  is  altogether  one 
of  the  rarest  souls  that  ever  trod  this  planet, 
a  modest  and  gentle  spirit,  a  patient  and  pains- 
taking scholar  in  fields  where  I  am  but  a  dabbler 
— listens  in  tolerant  amazement  to  the  passion 
with  which  I  discuss  the  problem  of  immortality. 
For  his  own  part  he  professes  the  most  languid 
interest  in  the  matter.  Life  is  good.  He  has 
worked,  and  loved,  and  gathered  a  friend  or  two, 
and  if  death  should  make  an  end  of  all,  still  he 
feels  that  it  has  been  worth  while. 

Of  quite  another  kidney  is  a  youthful  literary 
dilettante  of  my  acquaintance — he  who  confided 
to  me  one  day  the  distress  occasioned  in  his 
artistic  soul  by  the  crudeness  of  nature:  to  wit, 
that  while  in  the  autumn  she  does  succeed  in 
blending  the  most  violent  contrasts  of  color 
into  a  not-unpleasing  harmony,  in  the  spring 
the  greens  clash!  In  a  book  of  Paris  sketches 
published  some  years  ago  my  young  friend  tells 
a  pathetic  tale  of  a  little  lad,  the  son  of  the 
concierge,  who  died  after  a  brief  illness;  when  my 
friend  felt  constrained  through  pitying  sym- 
pathy to  offer  the  bereaved  father  the  consola- 

gl3 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

tions  of  a  heaven  in  which  his  own  enlightened 
mind  had  long  ceased  to  believe. 

Somewhere  between  these  two  points  of  view 
— the  frankly  empirical,  content  to  take  life  as 
it  is,  and  leave  the  question  of  its  outcome  for 
the  future  to  take  care  of  in  its  own  way;  and  the 
sentimental,  feebly  clinging  to  the  pleasant  feelings 
stirred  in  the  disillusioned  heart  by  its  outgrown 
faiths— the  mind  of  the  age  seems  to  oscillate. 

Individual  reactions,  naturally,  vary  widely. 
Professor  Miinsterberg  felt  that  unending  exist- 
ence would  be  an  unmitigated  bore.  Maeterhnck 
weaves  beautiful  spells  of  vague  mysteries,  wooing 
us  from  the  love  of  life  and  the  desire  for  indi- 
vidual persistence  to  a  misty  grandiose  dream 
of  some  higher  spiritual  identity.  The  British 
novelists,  each  after  his  kind,  seek  to  lose  them- 
selves in  the  study  of  the  endless  complex  variety 
of  human  life  here  and  now,  asking  no  questions 
as  to  its  larger  meaning  and  outcome.  Scores 
of  busy  men  and  women  on  every  hand  have, 
like  my  friend  the  Professor,  so  filled  their  lives 
with  useful  labor  and  their  consciousness  with 
the  sense  of  social  solidarity  that  the  individual 
problem  loses  its  poignancy,  and  they  profess 
themselves  content  with 

that  choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 
In  lives  made  better  by  their  presence, 

— a  point  of  view  characterized  by  Tennyson  as 
"Faith  as  vague  as  all  unsweet." 

214 


PROSPICE 

But  for  all  this  surface  content  with  the  things 
that  are  seen  and  temporal,  no  thoughtful  ob- 
server of  the  times  can  fail  to  feel,  despite  this 
apparent  absorption  in  the  life  that  now  is,  a 
restless  impatience  with  the  limitations  of  human 
experience,  and  a  deep-lying  sense  of  the  tragedy 
of  a  life  as  futile  as  frail.  On  the  one  hand  the 
ever-growing  materialism  of  our  civilization,  the 
refusal  of  the  modern  man  to  postpone  the  en- 
joyment of  his  desires,  the  mad  rush  of  work 
and  play  in  which  he  drowns  the  possibility  of 
thought  and  reflection,  bear  witness  to  an  unsat- 
isfied yearning  which  refuses  to  be  stilled.  On 
the  other  hand  we  find  the  "tender-minded" 
even  among  empirical  scientists  manifesting  a 
growing  interest  in  "psychic  research,"  in  the 
attempt  to  find  some  material  proof  of  spiritual 
existence. 

The  essential  pessimism  of  current  philosophy 
points  in  the  same  direction.  These  things  all 
testify  to  the  place  which  the  immortal  hope 
holds  in  our  total  view  of  things.  Here  and 
there  an  exceptionally  strong  and  valiant  soul 
may  hold  to  the  worth  of  life  despite  its  uncer- 
tainty and  the  gloom  of  its  everlasting  Night; 
but  the  great  majority  of  the  voices  which  cry 
aloud  to  the  present  world  are  mainly  conscious 
of  nothing  save  that  "there  is  no  work,  nor  de- 
vice, nor  knowledge,  nor  wisdom,  in  the  grave 
whither  thou  goest."  No  man  can  go  among  his 
fellows   as   a   spiritual   adviser,   seeking   to   find 

215 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

for  them  comfort  in  their  sorrows  jiiul  strengtli 
in  their  temptations,  and  not  reahze  the  pall 
which  the  modern  donbt  has  drawn  over  the 
face  of  the  sky. 

Now  and  then  the  dull  submission — too  tamed 
and  stolid  to  be  called  resignation — with  which 
the  modern  man  foots  the  treadmill  of  existence 
breaks  out  into  open  revolt.  Even  the  exquisite 
loveliness  of  Omar's  melodious  melancholy,  with 
which  the  modern  world  has  felt  so  much  sym- 
pathy, and  which  tends  all  the  while  to  shade 
off  into  a  grimly  playful  Epicureanism,  occasion- 
ally flashes  up  into  a  momentary  defiance  of  the 
Fate  from  which  there  is  no  appeal: 

Into  this  Universe,  and  Why  not  knowing. 
Nor  Whence,  like  Water  willy-nilly  flowing; 
And  out  of  it,  as  Wind  along  the  Waste, 
I  know  not  Whither,  willy-nilly  blowing. 

What,  without  asking,  hither  hurried  Whence? 
And,  without  asking,  Whither  hurried  hence! 

Oh,  many  a  Cup  of  this  forbidden  Wine 
Must  drown  the  memory  of  that  insolence! 

Oh  Thou,  who  Man  of  baser  Earth  didst  make, 
And  ev'n  with  Paradise  devise  the  Snake: 

For  all  the  Sin  wherewith  the  Face  of  Man 
Is  blacken 'd — Man's  forgiveness  give — and  take! 

The  spirit  of  the  twelfth-century  Persian, 
handed  down  to  our  time  through  the  kindred 
genius  of  Fitzgerald,  finds  a  like  expression  in 
the  mouth  of  the  anthologist  of  an  American 
country  town.     Edgar  Lee  Masters'   "Scholfield 

216 


PROSPICE 

Huxley"  seems  to  me  to  voice  the  inner  revolt  of  our 
whole  modern  life  against  the  blank  curtain  which 
our  philosophy  has  dropped  at  the  end  of  it  all: 

God!  ask  me  not  to  record  your  wonders, 

I  admit  the  stars  and  the  suns 

And  the  countless  worlds. 

But  I  have  measured  their  distances 

And  weighed  them  and  discovered  their  substances. 

I  have  devised  wings  for  the  air, 

And  keels  for  water. 

And  horses  of  iron  for  the  earth. 

I  have  lengthened  the  vision  you  gave  me  a  million 

times; 
I  have  leaped  over  space  with  speech. 
And  taken  fire  for  light  out  of  the  air. 
I  have  built  great  cities  and  bored  through  the  hills, 
And  bridged  majestic  waters. 
I  have  written  the  Iliad  and  Hamlet; 
And  I  have  explored  your  mysteries. 
And  searched  for  you  without  ceasing. 
And  found  you  again  after  losing  you 
In  hours  of  weariness. 
And  I  ask  you: 

How  would  you  like  to  create  a  su!n, 
And  the  next  day  have  the  worms 
Slipping  in  and  out  between  your  fingers? 

Not  in  many  a  day  has  any  poem  so  stirred 
me.  Here  we  have  the  whole  tragedy  of  modern- 
ity— its  sureness  of  itself,  its  consciousness  of 
masteries  manifold,  its  triumphs  over  the  lim- 
itations of  fate,  its  disillusionment,  its  dumb 
despair,  its  bitter  revolt.  This  is  the  passion 
that  stirs  in  my  own  heart,  and  which  my  placid 
friend,  the  Professor,  finds  it  so  hard  to  under- 
stand.   He,  God  bless  him,  has  lived  a  somewhat 

217 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

slu'ltorod  life,  surroiiiKkHl  with  Iiis  books  and 
liis  stiidenls;  and  absorbed  in  his  intellectual 
pursuits,  has  had  small  contact  with  the  passion- 
ate, desperate,  heart-hungry  world  of  eager  youth 
and  disillusioned  mid-age  and  sad,  empty-hearted 
eld  that  ebbs  and  flows  in  never-ceasing  tide 
under  the  white  lights  of  Broadway  and  surges 
through  Ludgate  Circus  and  laughs  in  the  Bois 
de  Boulogne  and  is  heaped  in  rotting  mounds 
of  shredded  flesh  between  the  trenches  of  the 
titan  armies  in  Flanders. 

What  is  it  all  about?  What  does  it  mean — 
not  for  Humanity,  not  for  Civilization,  but  for 
Tommy  and  Fritz  and  Adolph  and  Ivan,  for 
Mary  and  Gretchen  and  Elise  and  Anna?  What 
does  it  mean  for  the  murdered  babes  of  Belgium 
and  the  dying  exiles  of  Armenia;  for  the  mothers 
of  Europe  and  the  cash-girls  of  America?  What 
does  it  mean  for  folks — for  plain,  everyday  men 
and  women  who  are  born  and  live  and  suffer 
and  sorrow  and  die,  and  the  worms  slip  in  and 
out  between  their  fingers? 

Don't  talk  to  me  of  the  Race;  of  the  contribu- 
tion of  the  Individual  to  the  progress  of  the 
Whole!  Men  don't  live  as  a  Race,  as  a  Whole, 
as  Civilization.  They  live  as  individuals.  There 
is  no  human  experience  except  individual  expe- 
rience. Every  joy  is  some  one's  joy,  every  sorrow 
breaks  some  one  heart.  Granted  that  all  these 
myriads  of  human  individuals  are,  like  the  States 
of   the  American   Union,   constituted  in   mutual 

218 


PROSPICE 

dependence  on  each  other,  nevertheless  humanity 
has  no  existence  except  in  its  individual  units. 
Either  Hfe  must  have  a  meaning  for  the  single 
human  soul  in  the  infinite  isolation  of  its  indi- 
viduality, cut  off  as  remotely  from  all  its  neigh- 
bors as  the  stars  in  their  courses  or  the  ions  in 
their  orbits  within  the  atoms — else  it  has  no 
meaning  for  the  race,  whatever  it  may  have 
for  some  hypothetical  God  who  watches  over 
the  whole  farcical  tragedy. 

And  he,  shall  he, 

Man,  her  last  work,  who  seemed  so  fair, 
Such  splendid  purpose  in  his  eyes, 
Who  rolled  the  psalm  to  wintry  skies. 

Who  built  him  fanes  of  fruitless  prayer. 

Who  trusted  God  was  love  indeed 
And  love  Creation's  final  law — 
Tho'  Nature,  red  in  tooth  and  claw 

With  ravine,  shrieked  against  his  creed — 

Who  loved,  who  suffered  countless  ills, 
Who  battled  for  the  True,  the  Just, 
Be  blown  about  the  desert  dust, 

Or  sealed  within  the  iron  hills.'' 

No  more?     A  monster,  then,  a  dream, 
A  discord.     Dragons  of  the  prime. 
That  tare  each  other  in  their  slime. 

Were  mellow  music  matched  with  him. 

O  hfe  as  futile,  then,  as  frail! 

— {Tennyson,  "In  Memoriam.") 

It  is  the  fashion  just  now  to  call  this  an  ego- 
istic, not  to  say  selfish,  point  of  view.  The 
individual  is  bidden  to  sink  this  self-centered 
longing  for  personal  fulfillment,   in  devotion   to 

219 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

tlu*  wdfaro  of  his  fellows,  and  in  hope  for  some 
future  blessing  in  store  for  his  remote  descend- 
ants, to  whieh  glorious  divine  event  his  own  life 
shall  have  been  some  small  contribution. 

Nonsense!  If  the  future  holds  no  meaning  for 
the  individual  of  to-day,  it  will  hold  no  more  for 
the  individual  of  a  thousand  ages  hence.  When 
some  modern  Realist  shall  bring  me,  not  apples 
and  pears,  but  fruit-in-general,  I  will  believe  in 
some  blessedness  for  Man  which  does  not  come  to 
consciousness  and  have  its  abiding  worth  in  men. 

Selfish?  Yes,  as  selfish  as  a  mother's  joy  in 
her  babe,  as  the  bridegroom's  joy  in  his  bride. 
Selfish  as  the  wish  to  live  to-morrow  that  I  may 
finish  this  book.  Selfish  as  to  comply  with  the 
laws  of  health,  to  call  a  doctor  when  I  am  sick, 
to  look  forward  with  joy  to  the  possibilities  of 
the  new  year,  and  hope  to  meet  at  home  the 
friends  I  parted  with  in  Paris  last  week. 

All  this  talk  with  which  we  are  regaled  by  the 
moderns  is  but  whistling  to  keep  their  courage 
up.  There  are  those  who,  like  the  Professor, 
fancy  they  have  no  interest  in  the  question — 
though  I  have  never  been  quite  convinced  that 
their  hearts  are  so  different  from  my  own.  But 
the  loud-voiced  assertion  of  the  superior  spiritual 
worth  of  the  attitude  which  no  longer  desires  a 
future  existence  has  a  hollow  sound.  Mr.  Masters 
comes  nearer  being  entirely  ingenuous  and  frank: 
God!  How  would  you  like  it? 

Through  the  sickly  atmosphere  of  our  modern 
220 


PROSPICE 

life  the  "great  interrupting"  voice  of  Browning 
sounds  its  robust,  cheerful  courage,  like  the  voice 
of  his  own  Herakles  before  the  palace  of  Admetus: 

Even  so, 
Sudden  into  the  midst  of  sorrow,  leapt 
Along  with  the  gay  chfeer  of  that  great  voice, 

Hope,  joy,  salvation. — ("Balaustion's  Adventure.") 

Amid  the  restless  doubt  and  bhnd  despair  of  the 
time  his  joyous  confidence  refreshes  the  soul  like  a 
healing  draught  from  springs  in  the  desert.  Ten- 
nyson may  "faintly  trust  the  larger  hope."  Arnold 
may  listen  sadly  to  the  "melancholy,  long,  with- 
drawing roar"  of  the  sea  of  faith. 

Retreating,  to  the  breath 

Of  the  night-wind,  down  the  vast  edges  drear 

And  naked  shingles  of  the  world. 

—("Dover  Beach.") 

The  scientific  world  may  announce  the  death 
of  all  spiritual  existence  and  men  may  sink  in 
the  gloom  of  despair,  but  Browning  heeds  not. 

God's  in  his  heaven — 
All's  right  with  the  world. 

He  who  created  the  demand  must  of  necessity 
also  create  the  supply,  else  his  name  is  not  God. 

What,  my  soul?  see  thus  far  and  no  farther?  When 
doors  great  and  small 

Nine  and  ninety  flew  ope  at  a  touch,  shall  the  hun- 
dredth appall? 

In  the  least  things  have  faith,  yet  distrust  in  the  great- 
est of  all?  —("Saul.") 

Browning  does  not  attempt  to  prove  immor- 
tality.    Others  may  trifle  with  the  fooleries  of 

221 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Sludge  if  they  will — the  poet's  faith  rests  on  no 
such  i)recarious  foiindalion.  He  cheerfully  admits 
tliat  it  is  only  a  working  hypothesis.  But  its  im- 
mense superiority  over  all  other  interpretations  of 
life  is  that  it  is  a  workiuq  hypothesis — and  none 
other  will  work.  Saint  Paul  declared  it,  and  Omar 
and  Masters  reecho  it.    Why,  then,  stop  halfway? 

Was  it  not  great?  did  he  not  throw  on  God, 

(He  loves  the  burthen) — 
God's  task  to  make  the  heavenly  period 

Perfect  the  earthen? 
Did  not  he  magnify  the  mind,  show  clear 

Just  what  it  all  meant? 
He  would  not  discount  life,  as  fools  do  here. 

Paid  by  installment. 
He  ventured  neck  or  nothing — heaven's  success 

Found,  or  earth's  failure: 
"Wilt  thou  trust  death  or  not?"   He  answered  "Yes! 

Hence  with  life's  pale  lure!" 

— ("A  Grammarian's  Funeral.") 

The  poet  lives  in  no  fool's-paradise  of  closet 
speculation.  He  has  fought  with  doubt  no  less 
than  his  contemporaries,  but  he  drags  it  captive  at 
his  chariot  wheels.  All  evil  is  to  him  an  obstacle  to 
the  heights,  an  enemy  to  be  overcome;  and  doubt, 
and  death  itself,  belong  with  the  rest  of  the  brood 
of  hell.  So  he  sings  for  "one  fight  more,  the  best 
and  the  last,"  and  bids  his  friends  ask  no  better 
thing  for  him  at  the  end  than  that  he  may 

at  noonday,  in  the  bustle  of  man's  work-time. 

Greet  the  Unseen  with  a  cheer! 

Bid  him  forward,  breast  and  back  as  either  should  be, 

"Strive  and  thrive!"  cry,  "Speed,— Fight  on,  fare  ever 

There  as  here!" 

222 


PROSPICE 

Confronted  with  the  question,  Why  was  not 
the  reahty  of  the  future  life  made  plain  to  us? 
he  answers,  in  "La  Saisiaz,"  that  such  unmis- 
takable revelation  would  destroy  spiritual  free- 
dom— an  argument  we  have  met  before  in  "A 
Death  in  the  Desert."  Even  in  this  poem,  called 
forth  by  the  sudden  death  of  a  dear  friend,  and 
the  only  one  in  which  he  argues  the  question 
of  immortality,  he  does  not  attempt  to  prove 
the  life  beyond — he  only  asserts  that  without  it 
life,  to  him,  is  meaningless: 

Nay,  were  fancy  fact,  were  earth  and  all  it  holds  illu- 
sion mere, 

Only  a  machine  for  teaching  love  and  hate  and  hope 
and  fear 

To  myself,  the  sole  existence,  single  truth  'mid  false- 
hood— well ! 

Still — with  no  more  Nature,  no  more  Man  as  riddle  to 

be  read. 
Only  my  own  joys  and  sorrows  now  to  reckon  real 

instead — 
I  must  say — or  choke  in  silence — "Howsoever  came 

my  fate, 
Sorrow  did  and  joy  did  nowise — life  well  weighed — 

preponderate." 

The  mood  is  that  of  one  who  has  found  life 
more  prodigal  of  promises  than  of  satisfactions. 
The  revolt  of  modern  life  represents  the  sense 
of  the  futility  of  human  achievement  confronted 
by  the  brevity  of  life  and  the  certainty  of  death. 
It  is  the  protest  of  the  man  to  whom  life  has 
brought  all  good  gifts.     There  is  another  and 

223 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

perhaps  more  poignant  protest  in  the  heart  of 
llie  man  to  whom  Hfe  has  brought  nothing  but 
the  hunger  for  joy  without  its  fulfiUment. 

There  may  be  those  to  whom  life  has  been 
such  a  tragedy  that  death  seems  a  welcome  re- 
lease. As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  this  is  a  mood 
of  despair,  born  of  the  collapse  of  faith  in  a  future 
opportunity.  The  only  thing  that  could  really 
meet  the  need  of  such  a  heart  would  be  some  new 
state  of  existence  in  which  the  deep  desires  which 
are  inborn  in  human  nature  might  be  met. 

There  are  very  many  eager  and  capacious  souls 
to  whom  life  has  denied  her  chief  est  treasures. 
She  has  kept  her  promises  to  the  ear,  to  break 
them  to  the  hope.  One  by  one  the  ideals  and 
aspirations,  the  loves  and  friendships  and  achieve- 
ments and  successes  with  which  she  lures  us  to 
pour  out  the  deepest  life  within  us  prove  as  we 
attain  them  to  be  but  apples  of  Sodom,  which 
turn  to  ashes  in  our  grasp.  How  shall  such 
souls  be  satisfied  to  pass  out  of  existence  into 
nothingness,  having  tasted  nought  that  filled 
their  hearts,  or  having  found,  along  with  much 
deep  joy,  such  abysses  of  sorrow  as  left  them 
broken  and  stricken  by  the  wayside.''  Nothing 
can  answer  such  need  except  a  "new  life  alto- 
gether," and  it  is  this  which  Browning  sings. 

Ill 

There  are  three  classical  expressions  of  the 
poet's    attitude    toward    the    whole    problem — 

224 


PROSPICE 

"Cleon,"  "A  Grammarian's  Funeral,"  and  "Abt 
Vogler,"  though  the  spirit  which  rises  to  its 
height  in  these  poems  runs  Hke  a  golden  thread 
throughout  the  whole  body  of  his  work. 

The  first  expresses  the  same  sense  of  the  futil- 
ity of  human  achievement,  the  same  attitude 
toward  life  and  death  as  we  have  found  to  be 
characteristic  of  the  most  sensitive  spirits  among 
the  moderns. 

The  world  of  later  Greek  culture  had  much 
in  common  with  the  modern  period.  There  was 
the  same  confidence  in  the  discoveries  of  science 
and  the  triumphs  of  the  intellect,  the  same  dis- 
illusionment and  ennui  before  the  emptiness  of 
life,  the  same  agnosticism  regarding  the  deeper 
realities  of  the  spirit.  The  half-gods  had  gone, 
but  the  gods  had  not  yet  arrived.  Pilate  was 
a  child  of  his  time,  with  his  half-weary,  half- 
cynical,  but  wholly  skeptical  query,  "What  is 
truth?"  In  art  as  well  as  in  literature  and  philos- 
ophy the  period  was  one  of  decadence,  in  which 
form  had  taken  the  place  of  spirit,  and  was 
accompanied  by  a  certain  patronizing  deference 
to  the  Golden  Age  gone  by,  much  as  Bernard 
Shaw  in  our  own  day  patronizes  Shakespeare. 

Cleon  the  poet,  writing  to  the  tyrant  Protus 
to  express  his  appreciation  of  a  certain  munificent 
gift,  answers  at  the  same  time  two  or  three 
questions  the  king  has  propounded.  To  begin 
with,  he  modestly  admits  that  he  has  attained 
the  summit  of  human  greatness,  not  in  one  field 

225 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

of  endeavor  but  in  all.  Poet,  painter,  sculptor, 
architect,  philosoplier — in  all  these  directions 
achievement  can  no  farther  go.  Since  this  is 
simple  truth,  and  tlie  gift  of  the  gods,  why  allow 
a  false  modest^'  to  deprecate  the  fact?  In  all 
this  he  feels  that  he  has  surpassed  the  greatest 
of  the  ancients,  in  that,  though  they  may  have 
surpassed  him  at  the  single  point  wherein  each 
was  supreme,  he  has  touched  all  the  heights  of 
excellence. 

This  being  granted,  does  it  not  follow,  as  Protus 
suggests,  that  Cleon  must  be  accounted  the  hap- 
piest of  mortals,  since  he  cannot  die,  his  spirit 
living  on  forever  in  these  great  works  which  bless 
the  world?  For  answer  the  poet  asks  what  step 
or  stage  in  progress  might  have  been  suggested 
to  the  gods,  when  in  the  process  of  creation  they 
had  reached  the  point  where  mechanical  and 
physical  perfection  was  supreme.  Would  not  the 
next  step  be  the  creation  of  self-consciousness, 
wherein  perfection  may  bear  witness  to  itself 
and  find  pleasure  in  its  own  contemplation? 
But,  alas!  the  finite  cannot  be  perfect,  and  self- 
consciousness,  accordingly,  becomes  the  supreme 
tragedy,  since  it  means  nothing  more  than  the 
consciousness  of  limitation.  The  more  plainly 
man  sees  the  perfection  of  God,  the  more  pro- 
found must  be  his  despair  at  the  pitiful  weakness 
and  failure  of  his  own  life. 

Should  not  the  artist  prove  an  exception, 
however,  since  he  at  least  shares  the  divine  pre- 

226 


PROSPICE 

rogative  of  creation,  and  can  image  forth  the 
perfection  he  cannot  attain?  The  disillusioned 
poet  assures  his  friend  that  this  is  to  trip  upon 
a  merely  verbal  fallacy.  The  artist  merely  sees 
life  more  clearly  than  another — he  does  not  live: 

I  can  write  love-odes:  thy  fair  slave's  an  ode. 
I  get  to  sing  of  love,  when  grown  too  gray 
For  being  beloved :  she  turns  to  that  young  man, 
The  muscles  all  a-ripple  on  his  back. 
I  know  the  joy  of  kingship:  well,  thou  art  king! 

But  at  least,  the  king  may  rejoin,  the  poem 
lives,  and  the  poet  lives  in  his  song,  while  mere 
kings  die. 

Sappho  survives,  because  we  sing  her  songs. 
And  iEschylus,  because  we  read  his  plays. 

Here  we  have  precisely  the  quality  of  immor- 
tality commended  to  us  by  the  moderns.  Why 
should  it  not  content  the  soul.'*  I  counsel  those 
whose  minds  are  befogged  on  this  point  to  con- 
sider thoughtfully  the  passionate  protest  of  the 
Greek  poet.  Again  he  declares  that  all  this  is 
to  trip  on  a  mere  word.  Do  iEschylus  and  Sappho 
indeed  live.'*     Then 

let  them  come  and  take 
Thy  slave  in  my  despite,  drink  from  thy  cup, 
Speak  in  my  place. 

The  very  essence  of  life  is  conscious  experience. 
The  keener,  more  intense  the  consciousness,  the 
more  abundant  the  life.  Cleon  does  not  make 
the  point,  but  we  readily  see  it:  The  sponge  and 
the  oyster  may  be  said  to  live,  but  who  would 

227 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

compare  the  life  of  tlie  oyster  for  value  and 
significance  with  that  of  an  alert  and  vigorous 
human  spirit?  If  it  be  said  that  having  lived 
intensely  and  keenly  one  should  be  content  to 
pass  out  of  existence,  the  only  answer  is,  Then 
why  should  we  have  been  so  made  that  we  desire 
to  prolong  this  eager  experience,  and  what  is 
the  use  of  having  been  made  at  all  if  it  be  but 
for  a  moment? 

The  heart  of  the  tragedy,  as  Cleon  declares, 
lies  in  this:  that  the  keener  and  more  intense 
the  life,  the  more  insatiable  is  the  yearning  for 
yet  more  and  fuller  life.  This  is  the  supreme 
agony  of  human  existence,  against  which  he 
protests  with  all  his  soul — though  he  can  find 
no  clear  path  out  of  the  darkness. 

"Say,  rather,  that  my  fate  is  deadlier  still 
In  this,  that  every  day  my  sense  of  joy 
Grows  more  acute,  my  soul  (intensified 
By  power  and  insight)  more  enlarged,  more  keen; 
While  every  day  my  hairs  fall  more  and  more, 
My  hand  shakes,  and  the  heavy  years  increase— 
The  horror  quickening  still  from  year  to  year, 
The  consummation  coming  past  escape, 
WTien  I  shall  know  most,  and  yet  least  enjoy- 
When  all  my  works  wherein  I  prove  my  worth, 
Being  present  still  to  mock  me  in  men's  mouths. 
Alive  still  in  the  praise  of  such  as  thou, 
I,  I  the  feeling,  thinking,  acting  man. 
The  man  who  loved  his  life  so  over-much, 
Sleep  in  my  urn." 

This  is  the  very  revolt  of  "Scholfield  Huxley." 
It  is  the  passion  of  Omar: 

228 


PROSPICE 

"When  You  and  I  behind  the  Veil  are  past. 
Oh,  but  the  long,  long  while  the  World  shall  last." 

"Ah  Love !  could  you  and  I  with  Him  conspire 
To  grasp  this  sorry  Scheme  of  things  entire. 
Would  not  we  shatter  it  to  bits — and  then 
Remold  it  nearer  to  the  Heart's  desire!" 

The  heart  of  Cleon  refuses  to  rest  in  this  con- 
clusion, though  he  can  find  no  standing  ground 
for  faith. 

"It  is  so  horrible, 
I  dare  at  times  imagine  to  my  need 
Some  future  state  revealed  to  us  by  Zeus, 
Unlimited  in  capability 
For  joy,  as  this  is  in  desire  for  joy, 
— To  seek  which  the  joy -hunger  forces  us: 
That,  stung  by  straitness  of  our  life,  made  strait 
On  purpose  to  make  prized  that  life  at  large — 
Freed  by  the  throbbing  impulse  we  call  death. 
We  burst  there  as  the  worm  into  the  fly. 
Who,  while  a  worm  still,  wants  his  wings.     But  no ! 
Zeus  has  not  yet  revealed  it;  and  alas, 
He  must  have  done  so  were  it  possible!" 

And  then  follows  a  passage  in  which  Brown- 
ing has  at  once  caught  the  spirit  of  first-century 
Greek  culture  and  the  self-sufficiency  of  modern 
scientific  thought.  The  King  has  heard  of  one 
called  Paulus,  who  is  said  to  have  tidings  of 
just  such  a  revelation  as  the  poet  longs  for. 
Cleon  answers  an  inquiry: 

"Thou  canst  not  think  a  mere  barbarian  Jew, 
As  Paulus  proves  to  be,  one  circumcised. 
Hath  access  to  a  secret  shut  from  us? 
Thou  wrongest  our  philosophy,  O  King, 
In  stooping  to  inquire  of  such  an  one. 
As  if  his  answer  could  impose  at  all! 

229 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

lit'  wrilotli,  (loth  lu'?  WoU,  and  lio  may  write! 
Oh,  tlir  -lew  liiidcth  schohirs!  certain  slaves 
Who  touched  on  this  same  isle,  preached  him  and 

Christ ; 
And  (as  I  gathered  from  a  bystander) 
Their  doctrine  could  be  held  by  no  sane  man." 

Not  otherwise  would  Maeterlinck  and  MUn- 
sterberg,  Hauptmann  and  Galsworthy,  pass  over 
the  suggestion  that  the  Christian  faith  might 
prove  indeed  a  message  from  the  Infinite! 


IV 

"Cleon,"  as  we  have  seen,  represents  the 
futility  of  human  achievement  in  the  face  of  the 
great  fact  of  death.  It  is  Browning's  one  chief 
assertion  of  the  negative  side,  the  tragedy  of  a 
life  which  holds  no  outlook  beyond  this  present 
world.  "A  Grammarian's  Funeral"  comes  at  the 
matter  from  the  opposite  angle,  and  asserts  the 
supreme  worth  of  a  life  lived  on  a  scale  so  vast 
that  death  becomes  a  negligible  incident. 

The  poem  is  of  interest  from  many  points  of 
view.  It  finds  an  inspiring  idealism  beneath  a 
drudging  devotion  to  the  dry-as-dust  trivialities 
of  grammar.  It  interprets  the  inner  side  of 
humanism,  the  genuine  enthusiasm  for  truth 
which  was  awakened  by  the  Revival  of  Learning, 
and  no  less  the  enlarged  scope  which  it  gave  to 
life  itself.  But  the  deepest  thing  in  the  poem 
is  its  recognition  of  the  true  proportions  of  the 
human   soul,   its  character   as  belonging  not  to 

230 


PROSPICE 

time  but  to  eternity.  The  modern  man  says,  with 
Tom  Moore  on  the  cigar  signs,  "As  we  journey 
through  hfe  let  us  live  by  the  way."  He  is  so 
afraid  that  this  life  is  the  only  opportunity  he 
will  have  for  joy,  that  he  is  unwilling  to  let  the 
slightest  pleasure  escape.  The  days  and  years 
spent  in  drudgery,  however  valuable  they  may 
have  been  for  the  development  of  the  soul,  he 
counts  wasted.  Only  yesterday  an  eager  woman, 
a  suffrage  leader,  told  me  how  she  regretted  the 
ten  years  she  spent  rearing  her  children  in  a 
small  town — not  unhappy,  but  missing  all  the 
opportunities  for  travel  and  enjoyment  that  she 
might  have  had  but  for  marriage  and  its  respon- 
sibilities.   She  counted  those  years  lost. 

Over  against  this  attitude  toward  life  is  set  the 
spirit  of  a  man  who  is  so  sure  that  life  is  worth 
living  that  he  is  willing  first  to  learn  how  to  live — 

No  end  to  learning: 
Earn  the  means  first — God  surely  will  contrive 

Use  for  our  earning. 
Others  mistrust  and  say,  "But  time  escapes: 

Live  now  or  never!" 
He  said,  "What's  time?  Leave  Now  for  dogs  and  apes! 

Man  has  Forever!" 

That  low  man  seeks  a  little  thing  to  do, 

Sees  it  and  does  it: 
This  high  man,  with  a  great  thing  to  pursue. 

Dies  ere  he  knows  it. 
That  low  man  goes  on  adding  one  to  one, 

His  hundred's  soon  hit: 
This  high  man,  aiming  at  a  million. 

Misses  an  unit. 

231 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

That,  has  the  world  here — should  he  need  the  next, 

Ia'X  the  work!  mind  him! 
This,  throws  himself  on  God,  and  unperplexed 

Seeking,  shall  find  him. 

Small  wonder  the  disciples  of  such  a  man 
refuse  to  bury  their  master  where  darkling 
thorpe  and  croft  sleep,  "safe  in  their  tether," 
on  the  bosom  of  the  "unlettered  plain";  that 
they  will  rather  seek  sepulture 

On  a  tall  mountain,  citied  to  the  top, 
Crowded  with  culture! 

Thither  our  path  lies;  wind  we  up  the  heights: 

Wait  ye  the  warning? 
Our  low  life  was  the  level's  and  the  night's; 

He's  for  the  morning. 

Here's  the  top  peak;  the  multitude  below 

Live,  for  they  can,  there: 
This  man  decided  not  to  Live  but  Know — 

Bury  this  man  there? 
Here — here's  his  place,  where  meteors  shoot, clouds  form, 

Lightnings  are  loosened. 
Stars  come  and  go!  Let  joy  break  with  the  storm, 

Peace  let  the  dew  send! 
Lofty  designs  close  in  like  effects: 

Loftily  lying, 
Leave  him — still  loftier  than  the  world  suspects, 

Living  and  dying. 


When  we  turn  to  "Abt  Vogler,"  all  question 
and  doubt  are  swallowed  up  in  the  exuberant 
faith  that  every  discord  must  be  resolved,  and 
the   complete   fulfillment   of   the   soul's   longings 

232 


PROSPICE 

assured.     Music  is,   after  all,  the  one  creation 
ex  nihilo  in  our  experience: 

But  here  is  the  finger  of  God,  a  flash  of  the  will  that  can, 
Existent  behind  all  laws,  that  made  them,  and  lo,  they 
are! 
And  I  know  not  if,  save  in  this,  such  gift  be  allowed  to 
man. 
That  out  of  three  sounds  he  frame,  not  a  fourth  sound, 
but  a  star. 

But  music  is  essential  optimism,  for  the  ear 
is  not  satisfied  until  it  shall  end  in  perfect  har- 
mony, no  matter  what  dissonances  may  be  en- 
countered on  the  way.  Therefore  the  heart  of 
the  musician,  thrilled  to  its  depths  by  the  power 
of  the  music  he  has  poured  forth  out  of  his  own 
soul,  turns  trustfully  to  Him  who  likewise  is 
the  builder  and  maker  of  houses  not  made  with 
hands — confident  that  in  him  our  good  shall 
live  forever  and  our  evil  be  transformed  to  his 
perfect  will. 

There  shall  never  be  one  lost  good!  What  was,  shall 
live  as  before; 
The  evil  is  null,  is  nought,  is  silence  implying  sound; 
What  was  good  shall  be  good,  with,  for  evil,  so  much 
good  more; 
On  the  earth  the  broken  arcs;  in  the  heaven  a  perfect 
round. 

All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good  shall 
exist; 
Not  its  semblance,  but  itself;  no  beauty,  nor  good, 
nor  power 
Whose  voice  has  gone  forth,  but  each  survives  for  the 
melodist 
When  eternity  affirms  the  conception  of  an  hour. 

233 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

Tlie  liigli  that  i)rovcd  too  high,  the  heroic  for  earth  too 
liard. 
The  passion  that  left  the  ground  to  lose  itself  in  the 
sky. 
Are  music  sent  up  to  God  by  the  lover  and  the  bard; 
Enough  that  he  heard  it  once:  we  shall  hear  it  by 
and  by. 

Even  our  weaJoiesses  and  sins  and  failures  are 
but  captives  to  be  dragged  at  our  chariot  wheels 
to  show  how  great  were  the  enemies  over  whom 
we  have  triumphed: 

And  what  is  our  failure  here  but  a  triumph's  evidence 
For  the  fullness  of  the  days?  Have  we  withered  or 
agonized? 
Why  else  was  the  pause  prolonged  but  that  singing 
might  issue  thence? 
Why  rushed  the  discords  in,  but  that  harmony  should 
be  prized? 
Sorrow  is  hard  to  bear,  and  doubt  is  slow  to  clear. 
Each  sufferer  says  his  say,  his  scheme  of  the  weal  and 
woe: 
But  God  has  a  few  of  us  whom  he  whispers  in  the  ear; 
The  rest  may  reason  and  welcome:  'tis  we  musicians 
know. 

Surely,  no  sensitive  soul  can  listen  to  the  vast 
sorrow  of  Tschaikowsky's  Pathetic  Symphony,  or 
the  surging  passion  of  the  Tannhaeuser  Overture, 
or  the  triumphant  joy  with  which  Beethoven 
closes  the  Fifth  Symphony  without  recogniz- 
ing what  the  poet  meant,  and  feeling  with  him 
that  Creation's  chorus  itself  must  end  in  its 
"Hallelujah,  for  the  Lord  God  Omnipotent  reign- 
eth!" 

234. 


PROSPICE 

VI 

With  these  three  chief  expressions  of  Browning's 
faith  we  must  place  such  outbursts  of  confident 
hope  as  may  be  found  in  *'Rabbi  Ben  Ezra," 
"Evelyn  Hope,"  and  "Life  in  a  Love."  The  great 
teacher  of  the  Ghetto  challenges  those  who  bid  us 
seize  the  passing  moment  lest  joy  escape: 

Fool!     All  that  is,  at  all. 

Lasts  ever,  past  recall; 
Earth  changes,  but  thy  soul  and  God  stand  sure: 

What  entered  into  thee. 

That  was,  is,  and  shall  be: 
Time's  wheel  runs  back  or  stops :  Potter  and  clay  endure. 

In  "Evelyn  Hope"  the  busy  man  of  middle 
age,  sitting  by  the  dead  form  of  the  lovely  girl 
whose  sweetness  and  innocence  had  meant  so 
much  to  him,  though  she  scarcely  knew  his  name, 
feels  that  his  love  for  her  nevertheless  has  its 
own  meaning  and  must  have  its  own  fruition: 

"Delayed,  it  may  be,  for  more  lives  yet, 

Through  worlds  I  shall  traverse,  not  a  few; 
Much  is  to  learn,  much  to  forget, 
Ere  the  time  be  come  for  taking  you. 

"I  have  lived  (I  shall  say)  so  much  since  then, 

Given  up  myself  so  many  times. 
Gained  me  the  gains  of  various  men, 

Ransacked  the  ages,  spoiled  the  climes; 
Yet  one  thing,  one,  in  my  soul's  full  scope, 

Either  I  missed  or  itself  missed  me: 
And  I  want  and  find  you,  Evelyn  Hope!" 

So    in    the    two    brief    poems    which    embody 
perhaps  the  profoundest  interpretation  of  human 

235 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

love  to  be  found  in  tiny  literature,  **Love  in  a 
Life"  and  "Life  in  a  Love,"  the  poet  recognizes 
the  elusiveness  of  life's  loftiest  ideals  so  far  as 
our  human  experience  goes:  "Still  the  same 
chance!  she  goes  out  as  I  enter."  Yet  it  is  worth 
while  to  spend  the  whole  of  our  day  in  the  quest; 
and  though  twilight  falls 

— with  such  suites  to  explore. 
Such  closets  to  search,  such  alcoves  to  importune, 

the  love  and  life  we  pursue  can  never  in  the 
end  utterly  escape  us: 

But  what  if  I  fail  of  my  purpose  here? 
It  is  but  to  keep  the  nerves  at  strain. 

To  dry  one's  eyes  and  laugh  at  a  fall. 
And  baffled,  get  up  and  begin  again, — 

So  the  chase  takes  up  one's  life,  that's  all. 
^\Tiile,  look  but  once  from  your  farthest  bound 

At  me  so  deep  in  the  dust  and  dark. 
No  sooner  the  old  hope  goes  to  ground 

Than  a  new  one,  straight  to  the  self-same  mark 
I  shape  me — 
Ever 
Removed ! 

This  is  the  spirit  in  which  Robert  Browning 
faced  life.  He  "believed  in  the  Soul,  was  very 
sure  of  God."  He  was  confident  that  everything 
in  life  which  baffles  and  perplexes  is  but  a  part 
of  the  discipline  and  training  of  spiritual  man- 
hood. Disappointment  and  sorrow,  hardship  and 
struggle,  pain  and  loss,  all  are  relative  to  the 
larger  meaning  and  purpose  of  existence. 

Such  a  human  life  as  he  conceives  must  of 
236 


PROSPICE 

necessity  be  of  larger  scope  than  this  brief  expe- 
rience of  the  earthly  years  can  afford.  It  is  tuned 
to  Eternity.  This  life  must  be  probationary, 
the  "initiatory  spasm."  Earth  is  but  the  vesti- 
bule of  God's  great  temple,  whose  grandeur  and 
excelling  beauty  the  chiefest  of  earth's  treasures 
can  but  suggest.  To  live  as  though  the  pleasure 
and  joy  of  human  experience  were  the  supreme 
ends  is  to  lose  one's  soul.  To  count  not  one's 
life  dear  unto  oneself  in  the  pursuit  of  those 
ideals  which  transcend  time  and  place  is  to 
attain. 

Death,  in  such  a  life,  is  a  mere  incident,  the 
gateway  into  the  larger  experience.  To  question 
the  soul's  life  after  death  is  to  deny  the  meaning 
of  it  all,  to  overthrow  the  foundations  of  a  life- 
philosophy  based  on  the  worth  of  the  ideal. 
Therefore  Browning  will  give  no  place  to  doubt 
or  fear.  He  casts  himself  boldly  on  the  good- 
ness of  God  and  the  veracity  of  human  instincts, 
and  lives  in  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  Infinite. 

How  all  the  petty  trivialities  of  present-day 
thought  are  dwarfed  by  such  an  outlook  on  the 
universe!  How  deep  and  calm  and  broad  is  such 
a  life  compared  with  the  hot  and  restless  pas- 
sion of  the  moderns,  with  their  defiance  of  fate 
and  their  denunciations  of  the  moral  law.  Mid- 
Victorian  it  may  be,  and  orthodox,  not  to  say 
Christian;  but,  at  least,  it  gives  room  for  the 
soul  to  live  and  stretch  itself,  to  spread  its  wings 
and  fly  in  the  deep  empyrean  of  a  life  great  enough 

237 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

to  be  worth  wliile  and  full  enough  to  satisfy 
the  most  insatiable  hunger  for  fulfillment  and 
self-expression. 

With  such  a  faith  a  man  can  afford  to  keep 
under  his  body  and  bring  it  into  subjection  to 
the  higher  ends  of  thought  and  feeling.  He  can 
be  content  with  a  small  measure  of  what  men 
call  success  and  achievement,  laying  up  for  him- 
self treasures  where  neither  moth  nor  rust  doth 
corrupt.  He  can  be  sick  and  poor  and  friendless 
and  yet  possess  a  wealth  greater  than  the  treas- 
ures of  Ind,  because  he  lives  in  the  eternal  uni- 
verse as  a  son  in  his  Father's  house.  He  can 
love  with  all  the  strength  of  his  soul,  and  see 
his  loved  ones  laid  in  the  ground,  and  look  for- 
w^ard  to  the  day  when  for  him  as  well  the  worms 
will  be  slipping  in  and  out  between  his  fingers, 
and  his  heart  will  not  break,  because  he  looks 
for  a  city  that  hath  foundations,  whose  builder 
and  maker  is  God. 

This,  therefore,  as  it  seems  to  me,  is  the  deep- 
est thing  in  the  message  of  Browning.  At  least 
it  is  that  which  speaks  most  deeply  to  my  own 
heart,  and  by  reason  of  which  I  turn  to  him  in 
hours  of  discouragement, 

when  my  light  is  low. 
When  the  blood  creeps,  and  the  nerves  prick 
And  tingle;  and  the  heart  is  sick, 
And  all  the  wheels  of  Being  slow. 

Always  I  find  him  tonic  and  inspiring.  I  love 
the  joy  in  life  which  he  always  feels,  the  fresh- 

238 


PROSPICE 

ness  of  his  interest  in  common  humanity,  the 
vigor  of  his  enthusiasm,  the  robust  courage  of 
his  everyday  philosophy.  But  most  of  all  I 
find  help  in  his  unconquerable  faith  in  life  and 
its  ultimate  outcome,  in  the  spirit  that  could 
sing  its  cheeriest  song  of  hope  through  the  midst 
of  his  sorrow  for  the  Love  which  had  been  life's 
richest  gift. 

Fear  death?— -to  feel  the  fog  in  my  throat, 

The  mist  in  my  face, 
When  the  snows  begin,  and  the  blasts  denote 

I  am  nearing  the  place, 
The  power  of  the  night,  the  press  of  the  storm. 

The  post  of  the  foe; 
Where  he  stands,  the  Arch  Fear  in  a  visible  form, 

Yet  the  strong  man  must  go: 
For  the  journey  is  done  and  the  summit  attained. 

And  the  barriers  fall, 
Though  a  battle's  to  fight  ere  the  guerdon  be  gained, 

The  reward  of  it  all. 
I  was  ever  a  fighter,  so — one  fight  more, 

The  he^  and  the  last ! 
I  would  hate  that  death  bandaged  my  eyes,  and 
forebore. 

And  bade  me  creep  past. 
No !  let  me  taste  the  whole  of  it,  fare  like  my  peers 

The  heroes  of  old. 
Bear  the  brunt,  in  a  minute  pay  glad  life's  arrears 

Of  pain,  darkness,  and  cold. 
For  sudden  the  worst  turns  the  best  to  the  brave. 

The  black  minute's  at  end. 
And  the  elements'  rage,  the  fiend-voices  that  rave, 

Shall  dwindle,  shall  blend. 
Shall  change,  shall  become  first  a  peace  out  of  pain, 

Then  a  light,  then  thy  breast, 
O  thou  soul  of  my  soul !     I  shall  clasp  thee  again. 

And  with  God  be  the  rest! 

239 


CONFESSIONS  OF  A  BROWNING  LOVER 

And  his  last  word  to  the  world  is  the  ringing 
cliallengc  of  the  "Epilogue"  to  "Asolando": 

At  the  midnight  in  the  silence  of  the  sleep-time. 

When  yon  sot  yonr  fancies  free, 
Will  they  pass  to  whcrt — by  death,  fools  think,  im- 
prisoned, 
I^w  he  lies  who  once  so  loved  you,  whom  you  loved  so, 
— Pity  me? 

Oh  to  love  so,  be  so  loved,  yet  so  mistaken ! 

^^^lat  had  I  on  earth  to  do 
With  the  slothful,  with  the  mawkish,  the  unmanly? 
Like  the  aimless,  helpless,  hopeless,  did  I  drivel 
— Being — who? 

One  who  never  turned  his  back  but  marched  breast 
forward. 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break. 
Never  dreamed,  though  right  were  worsted,  wrong 

would  triumph, 
Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake. 

No,  at  noonday  in  the  bustle  of  man's  work-time 

Greet  the  Unseen  with  a  cheer! 
Bid  him  forward,  breast  and  back  as  either  should  be, 
"Strive  and  thrive!"  cry  "Speed, — fight  on,  fare  ever 
There  as  here!" 


ie4o 


INDEX 


Abraham,  32. 

"Abt  Vogler."  40,  48,  61,  65, 
176.  200,  225,  232ff. 

Andrea  del  Sarto,  40,  61,  87. 

"Andrea  del  Sarto,"  41,  81. 

"Angelus,  The,"  70ff. 

Anthropomorphism,  1  4  4  ff., 
157ff. 

"Apparent  Failure,"  99. 

Aristotle,  92. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  27,  40,  60, 
139,  168,  221. 

Art  and  Artists,  24ff.,  29,  3  Iff., 
49ff.,  87ff. 

"Asolando,  Epilogue  to,"  193, 
222,  240. 

"At  the  Mermaid,"  86. 

Augustine,  Saint,  54,  58,  158. 

"Aurora  Leigh"  (Mrs.  Brown- 
ing), 73,  113. 

B 

Bach,  47. 

"Balaustion,"    21,     155,     179, 

221. 
Beauty,  28,  34,  42ff.,  55ff. 
Beecher,  192. 

Beethoven,  34,  47,  53,  234. 
Bennett,  Arnold,  84,  98. 
Benson,  A.  C,  80. 
Bergson,  109ff.,  187. 
"Bishop  Blougram's  Apology," 
,31,    38,    65,    81,    125,    130, 
188-9,  198,  199. 


"Bishop    Orders    His    Tomb, 

The,"  38,  67. 
"Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon,  The," 

21,  28. 
"Blue  Bird,  The,"  112. 
Booth,  Edwin,  71. 
Botticelli,  29,  62,  87. 
Bridge-building,  132ff. 
British  Novelists,  83,  214. 
Browning,    Elizabeth    Barrett, 

72,  73,  77,  78,  113,  121,  179. 

Browning,  Robert — as  Artist, 
19ff.,  24ff.,  39ff.,  46ff.,  66, 
135,  192;  as  Philosopher,  16, 
19,  21,  26,  28,  29,  73,  87ff., 
144ff.,  164;  as  Religious 
Teacher,  18ff.,  103ff.,  135ff.; 
Health,  192;  Human  Inter- 
est, 36,  63ff.;  Message,  15, 
50;  Obscurity,  17,  77ff.; 
Optimism,  66,  97,  192ff.; 
Orthodoxy,  97,  102;  Range 
of  Interest,  10;  Revolt,  96, 
lOlff. 

Browning,      Robert,       Poems 

Quoted: 
Abt  Vogler,  200,  233,  234. 
Andrea  del  Sarto,  41. 
Apparent  Failure,  99. 
Asolando,  Epilogue  to,  193, 

222,  240. 
At  the  Mermaid,  86. 
Balaustion's  Adventure,  155, 

221. 


^1 


INDEX 


Bishop  BlougDun's  Apology, 

88.  07,   \i:>,  l;U),  IS!).  1!)8. 

19!) . 
Caliban  Iptin  St'lol)os,  145. 
Cl.iUlc  Uolaud,  li)l. 
(Miristmas    Eve    ami    Kaster 

Day,  1(57-108.  100. 
rieon,  ii7.  US.  iid,  iSO. 
Cristina,  174. 
Death  in  the  Desert,  A,  127, 

153,    169,    1!)7,    204,    205, 

209. 
Dramatis  Persona^,  Epilogue 

to,  142,  143. 
Epistle  of  Karshish,  152. 
Evelyn  Hope,  235. 
Ferishtah's  Fanries,  67. 
Fra  Lippo  Lippi,  21,  24,  33, 

44,  188. 
Grammarian's    Funeral,    A, 

222,  231,  232. 
Holy  Cross  Day,  47. 
In  a  Balcony,  169. 
Instans  Tyrannus,  195. 
La  Saisiaz,  223. 
Love   in   a    Life,    Life    in   a 

Love,  236. 
Old     Pictures    in    Florence, 

205-207. 
One  Word  More,  59.  67.  81, 

177. 
Paracelsus,     14,     138,     166, 

178,  204. 
Pippa  Passes,  138,  221. 
Popularity,  47. 
Prospice,  239. 
Rabbi    Ben    Ezra,    47,    165, 

182,     183-184,     198,    205, 

207,  208,  209,  210,  235. 


Ring  and  The  Book,  The: 

Introduction,  28,  117. 

Capousacchi,  15.3. 

Ponipilia.  155,  210. 

The  Pope,  67.  119,  140. 
141.  148,  15.3,  198-199. 
209. 

Guido,  68. 

The   Book  and  the  Ring, 
81,  119. 
Saul.  18,  45,   147,  148,   149, 

199,  207.  221. 
Sibrandus  Schafnaburgensis, 

23,  24. 
Statue  and   the   Bust,   The, 

130. 
Browning,  Robert,  Poems  Dis- 
cussed: 
Abt  Vogler,  232ff. 
Balaustion,  179. 
Bishop    Orders    His    Tomb, 

The,  67. 
Christmas   Eve  and   Easter 

Day,  129fr. 
Cleon,  225ff. 
Death    in    the    Desert,     A, 

126f.,  177. 
Epistle  of  Karshish,  151f. 
Grammarian's    Funeral,    A, 

230flF. 
In  a  Balcony,  177. 
In  a  Laboratory,  39. 
Paracelsus,  121f. 
Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,  207. 
Ring  and  The  Book,  The,  82, 

117ff.,  178. 
Saul,  147. 
Sibrandus  Schafnaburgensis, 

22ff. 


242 


INDEX 


Statue  and  the  Bust,   The, 
130. 

Browning  Robert,   Poems  Re- 
ferred to: 
Abt  Vogler,  40,  48,  65,  176. 
Andrea  del  Sarto,  40,  81. 
Any  Wife  to  Any  Husband, 

171. 
Balaustion,  21. 
Bishop  Blougram's  Apology, 

31,  38,  65,  81,  137. 
Bishop    Orders    His    Tomb, 

The,  38. 
Blot  in  the  'Scutcheon,  The, 

28. 
By  the  Fireside,  176. 
Caliban    upon    Setebos,    31, 

46,  65,  157. 
Childe  Roland,  88. 
Cleon,  15,  31,  48,  65,  81,  176. 
Confessional,  The,  171. 
Count  Gismond,  65. 
Cristina,  176. 
Death  in  the  Desert,  A,  65, 

128,    137,    141,    147,    176, 

223. 

Epistle  of  Karshish,  40,  65, 

176. 
Evelyn  Hope,  176. 
Face,  A,  38. 

Fifine  at  the  Fair,  65,  171. 
Forgiveness,  A,  46. 
Fra  Lippo  Lippi,  38. 
Garden  Fancies,  22. 
Gold  Hair,  65. 
Holy  Cross  Day,  46. 
How     They     Brought     the 

Good  News,  18. 
In  a  Laboratory,  38. 


Incident  of  the  French  Camp, 

18. 
Ivan  Ivanovitch,  65. 
James  Lee's  Wife,  171. 
Johannes  Agricola,  65. 
La  Saisiaz,  137. 
Last  Ride  Together,  39,  176. 
Lost  Leader,  The,  35,  180. 
Love  Among  the  Ruins,  38, 

44,  176. 
Master  Hugues,  46. 
Memorabilia,  44. 
Men  and  Women,  38. 
Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium.  46, 

65,  222. 
My  Last  Duchess,  38,  67. 
My  Star,  44. 
Ned  Bratts,  65. 
One    Word    More,    44,     77, 

176. 
Paracelsus,  28,  38,  44. 
Pied  Piper,  The,  18. 
Pippa  Passes,  171. 
Porphyria's  Lover,  65. 
Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,  28,  65,  176. 
Ring  and  The  Book,  The,  21, 
31,  38,  40,  65,  79,  128,  137, 
167,  171,  176. 
Rudel,  176. 
Saul,  18,  44,  48. 
Soliloquy     of    the    Spanish 

Cloister,  46. 
Sordello,  17,  35.  38,  44,  79. 
Two  Poets  of  Croisic,  28. 
Bunyan,  108. 
Burns,  35,  41. 
Burroughs,  John,  94. 
Byron,  30,  lOlff. 
"By  the  Fireside,"  176. 


£43 


INDEX 


Caliban,  SI.  46.  65.  Uo.  157. 
Carlo  Dolci.  40. 
Carlylc.  36,  139.  168. 
Cavr  Man.  57. 
Chambrrs.  HoIktI  W  .,  S6. 
"Chai)niau's  Iloiucr"  (Keats). 

IS. 
Chostcrton.  ii,  47,  51,  97,  100, 

118,  l!25,  131. 
"Childe  Roland,"  88,  194. 
Chinese  Proverb,  60. 
"Choir    Invisible"    (George 

Eliot),  214. 
Christ,  Person  of,  152ff. 
"Christmas    Eve    and    Easter 

Day,"  129f.,  167-168,  169. 
Cimabue,  40,  62. 
"Cleon,"  15,  31,  48,  65,  81,  176, 

225ff. 
Clifford,  Professor,  85. 
"Cloud,  The"  (Shelley),  42. 
Clough,  Arthur  Hugh,  168. 
Coleridge,  43. 
Comte,  137. 
Corson,  Professor,  65. 
"Count  Gismond,"  65. 
"Cristina,"  174,  176. 
Cromwell,  54. 
Cubist,  34. 


"Daffodils"  (Wordsworth),  35. 

Dante,  26,  37,  42,  108,  177. 

"Dark  Flower,  The,"  90,  174. 

Darwin,  12,  93ff.,  101,  165,  166. 

Dead  Dog,  A,  66. 

"Death  in  the  Desert,  A,"  65. 
126.  137,  141,  153,  169,  176, 
177,  197,  204,  205,  223 


Debu.ssy,  47. 
Dickens,  85. 

"Dover  Beach"  (Arnold),  221. 
"Dramatis   Persona-,    Epilogue 
to,"  132f. 

E 
Edinburgh  Review,  28. 
Eliot,  George,  108,  214. 
Ellis,  Havelock,  97. 
Emerson,  60,  107. 
"Epistle  of  Kar.shish,"  40,  65, 

151f.,  176. 
"Evelyn  Hope,"  176,  235. 
Evil,  Problem  of,  185ff. 


"Face,  A,"  38. 

Faith,  123ff. 

"Faust"  (Goethe),  118,  120. 

"Ferishtah's  Fancies,"  67. 

"Fifine  at  the  Fair,"  65,  171. 

Fifth  Symphony  (Beethoven), 

34,  234. 
Fiske,  John,  201. 
Fitzgerald,  216,  229. 
"Forgiveness,  A,"  46. 
Fra  Angelico,  29. 
"Fra  Lippo  Lippi,"  21,  24,  33, 

38,  44,  61,  188. 
France,  Anatole,  83,  91. 
Freedom,  163,  169. 
Futurist,  32,  89. 


Galileo,  92. 

Galsworthy,  90,  98,  174,  230. 

"Garden  Fancies,"  22. 

Gladstone,  90. 

God,  Idea  of,  136. 


244 


INDEX 


Goethe,  26,  37,  120. 

"Gold  Hair,"  65. 

Gorky,  83. 

"Grammarian's    Funeral,    A," 

230ff. 
"Grecian       Urn,       Ode       to" 

(Keats),  44. 

H 

Haeckel,  95,  124,  143,  161f. 

Hamlet,  32,  71. 

Hauptmann,  84,  230. 

Hazlitt,  107. 

"Holy  Cross  Day,"  46,  47. 

Homer,  31,  47. 

"How  They  Brought  the  Good 

News,"  18. 
Human  Nature,  165flF. 
Hume,  202. 
Huxley,  13. 
Hymnology,  25. 


Ian  Mclaren,  151. 

Ibsen,  91. 

"Idylls  of  the  King"  (Tenny- 
son), 36. 

Iliad,  31. 

"In  a  Balcony,"  169,  177. 

"In  a  Laboratory,"  38,  39. 

"Incident  of  the  French 
Camp,"  18. 

Incarnation,  64,  148fif. 

Individualism,  180ff. 

"In  Memoriam"  (Tennyson), 
72,  115,  146,  219,  238. 

"Instans  Tyrannus,"  195. 

"Intimations  of  Immortality" 
(Wordsworth),  27,  59. 

"Ivan  Ivanovitch,"  65. 


Jackson,  Stonewall,  132. 

James,  Professor,  132. 

"Jean    Christophe"    (Roland), 

83. 
"Johannes  Agricola,"  65. 

K 

Kant,  92,  110. 
Keats,  18,  30,  43,  44,  49,  80. 
Kempis,  Thomas  a,  108,  124. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  36,  179. 
Kipling,  43,  48,  84,  183. 
"Kubla  Khan"  (Coleridge),  43. 


"La  Saisiaz,"  137,  223. 

"Last  Ride  Together,"  39,  176. 

Le  Gallienne,  Richard,  76,  83. 

Leonardo,  87,  135. 

Literature,  Modern,  11,  13,  82f. 

Locke,  202. 

"Locksley    Hall"    (Tennyson), 

36. 
Lord,  John,  144. 
"Lost  Leader,  The,"  35,  180. 
Love,  169ff. 
"Love  Among  the  Ruins,"  44, 

176. 
"Love    in    a    Life,    Life    in    a 

Love,"  40,  176,  177,  236. 

M 

Macaulay,  168. 

Maeterlinck,  84,  90,  112,  219, 

230. 
Mark  Twain,  85. 
Masefield,  John,  13. 
"Master  Hugues,"  46. 


^d 


INDEX 


Mastors.  Kdgar  Loo,  ■ill,  iiO. 

Hi,  as. 

"Maud"  (Tennyson),  36. 
Maiiriro,  F.  1).,  179. 
Mi'inniling,  87. 
"  M<'iu<>ral)ilia,"  44. 
Morcdith,  (toorpo,  85. 
Micliaelangdo,  41,  46,  48,  63, 

87,  135. 
"Midsummer  Night's  Dream" 

(Shakespeare),  42. 
Mid-Victorian  Spirit,  90,  97,  98, 

101,  105,  121,  131,  139.  237. 
Mill,  J.  S.,  140,  185,  202. 
Millet,  62,  70ff. 
Milton,  30,  42. 
"Mr.  Sludge  the  Medium,"  46, 

65,  222. 
Modernism,     11,     86ff.,     89ff., 

105ff.,  166,  173,  215,  231. 
More,  Paul  Elmer,  28,  29,  30, 

170f.,  194. 
Morris,  William,  36,  61,  179. 
MUnsterberg,  214,  230. 
"My  Last  Duchess,"  38,  39. 
"My  Star,"  44. 

N 

"Ned  Bratts,"  65. 

Nero,  51. 

Nettleship,  65. 

New  Birth,  170ff. 

Newton,  92. 

Nietzsche,  83,  90,  91,  122,  185. 

"Nightingale,  Ode  to"  (Keats), 
43. 

Nominalist,  33,  220. 

"Northern  Farmer"  (Tenny- 
son), 36. 

Noyes,  Alfred,  13,  94. 


O 

"Old    Pictures    in    Florence," 

199,  205ff. 
Omar  Khayyam,  216,  222,  229. 
"One  Word  More,"  44,  59,  176, 

177. 
Orbit  of  Life,  157ff. 
Orr,  Mrs.,  65,  97,  102. 


Paley,  93. 

"Paracelsus,"  14,  38,  44,  121f., 

138,  166,  178,  204. 
"Paradise  Lost"  (Milton),  30. 
"Pied  Piper,  The,"  18. 
"Pippa  Passes,"  138,  171,  221. 
Plato,  50,  53,  55.  58,  61,  92. 
Poe,  41. 
"Poet's     Vision     of      Ma  n" 

(Powell),  202. 
"Popularity,"  47. 
"Porphyria 's  Lover,"  65. 
Pragmatism,  11  Iff.,  154. 
"Prometheus,      Unbound" 

(Shelley).  31. 
Progress,  204ff. 
"Prospice,"  239. 
Psychology,  29,  163.  171.  202f. 
Psychology,  Professor  of.  213, 

214,  217,  220. 
Puritanism,  54,  58,   64,   158f., 

168. 

Q 

Quotations  from  Other  Poets: 
Arnold,     Matthew,    "Dover 

Beach,"  221. 
Browning,  E.  B., 

"Aurora  Leigh,"  73,  113. 

"Wine  of  Cyprus,"  179. 


246 


INDEX 


Coleridge/'Kubla  Khan,"  43. 

Eliot,  George,  "Choir  In- 
visible," 214. 

Fitzgerald,  "Omar  Khay- 
yam," 216,  229. 

Keats,  "Chapman's  Homer," 
18;  "Grecian  Urn,"  44; 
"Nightingale,"  43. 

Masters,  Edgar  Lee,  "Schol- 
field  Huxley,"  217. 

Shelley,  "Cloud,"  42. 

Tennyson,  "In  Memoriam," 
72,  115,  146,  219,  238. 

Wordsworth,  "Immortality," 
59,  63;  "Tables  Turned," 
74;  "DafiFodils,"  35;  "Tin- 
tern  Abbey,"  36. 

R 
"Rabbi  Ben  Ezra,"  38,  47,  65, 

165,  176,  182,  183-184,  198, 

235. 
Raphael,  34,  40,  41,  45,  48,  50. 

62. 
Rembrandt,  62,  87. 
Riley,  James  Whitcomb,  41. 
"Ring  and  The  Book,  The,"  21, 

28,  31,  38,  40,  65,  67,  68,  79, 

117.  119,  128,  137.  138,  140, 

141,  148,  153,  155,  167,  176, 

178,  198-199. 
Rodin,  48. 

Rolland,  Romaine,  83. 
Rubens,  41. 
"Rudel,"  176. 
Ruskin,  36,  61,  139,  168,  179. 


Saintsbury,  Professor,  21. 
Sappho,  31. 


"Saul,"  18,  44,  46,  48,  147,  148, 
149,  199,  221. 

Schoenberg,  47. 

"Scholfield  Huxley"  (Masters), 

217,  228. 
Science,     Modern,     llff.,     82, 

91flF.,  161ff.,  190-191. 
Scott,  85. 
Shakespeare,  22,  26,  32,  37,  42, 

47,  49,  50,  71,  80. 
Shaw,  G.  Bernard,  52,  97,  183, 

225. 
Shelley,  31,  51,  97,  102,  106. 
"Sherwood"  (Noyes),  84. 
"Sibrandus  Schafnaburgensis," 

22,  23,  24. 
"Skylark"  (Shelley),  31. 
Social  Problems,  36,  179ff. 
"Soliloquy     of     the     Spanish 

Cloister,"  46,  67. 
"Sordello,"  17,  35,  38,  44,  79, 

225. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  94,  95,  110, 

124,  165,  202. 
"Statue  and  the  Bust,  The," 

130. 
Stevenson,  194. 
Strauss,  Richard,  47. 
Sudermann,  83. 
Swinburne,  171. 


"Tables  Turned"  (Words- 
worth), 74. 

"Tannhauser"  Overture,  234. 

Tennyson,  16,  29,  35,  46,  47, 
72,  79,  80,  84,  115,  139,  146, 
168,  175,  214,  219,  221,  238. 

Thackeray,  85. 


247 


INDEX 


"Tiutoru      Abbey"      (Words- 
worth), 35. 
Tolstoy,  50,  54,  58,  61. 
Trout,  Professor,  i'3. 
Tscliaikowsky,  ■iSi. 
Tiiruor,  104. 

*'Two  Poots  of  Croisic,"  28 
Tyndall,  13. 

U 

Unitarianism,  150,  153. 

V 

Voltaire,  137. 
Von  Moltkc,  76. 


w 


181. 


War   in   Europe,    13,   89, 
218. 

Wells,  H.  G.,  97,  183. 

Wharton,  Edith,  98. 

Whistler,  135. 

White,  Bouek,  182. 

Wilde,  Oscar,  53,  171. 

"Wine      of      Cyprus" 

Browning),  179. 
Wordsworth,  26f.,  35,  46,   47 

59,  61,  62,  106,  180. 


(Mrs. 


248 


DATE  DUE 


A     000  667  891 


